Disavowed
by HarbingerKismet
Summary: How far will they go when they have nothing left to lose?  MW3 sequel to "Flash."  Possible spoilers.  Rated M for violence, language, and suggestive themes.
1. Last Words

"People so seldom say I love you, and then it's either too late or love goes. So when I tell you I love you, it doesn't mean I know you'll never go, only that I wish you didn't have to." ~Anon

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><p><em>Thump, thump. Thump, thump.<em>

Pain. Bright colors. Tunneled vision. A metallic taste in my mouth. Breath caught in my lungs. Stones in my gut. Cold fingertips. Flashes of light spilling in and out of my vision. Flashes. Flash.

"Nikolai, we have to get Soap out of here."

"Da, I know a place."

This is only the third time I've been at death's door. _Only_ the third time. I can hear it knocking. No, that's the sound of helo blades. Or the sound of my heart hammering in my chest. Or the sound of my blood pumping in my ears. Or maybe that's the sound of my life flashing before my eyes. Flashing. Flash.

"_What are you doing here?_"

"_You act like I've never been in here before," she says to me. She's picking idly at her nails like she always does—not nervousness. A troubled mind looking for something to occupy it. Her hair is down, tucked behind her ears but hanging around her shoulders. I can't remember ever seeing her with her hair down. It looks lighter, more golden brown than chocolate._

_She crosses the room but stops when she reaches the end of my bunk. "I just didn't expect you to come," I tell her. "You're usually in the gun room at this time. Or in the mess with Ghost."_

"_And you're _not_ in the mess with Ghost," she says. "I came looking for you." I can tell she's biting at the inside of her cheek from the way her jaw is moving up and down and back and forth. _That's_ a sign of nervousness. She always does that when she's worried or concerned or unsure about something. I can see it in her eyes too, the way the hazel irises stare over me like they're looking for something. I can't help but cock an eyebrow at her. "Why are you looking at me like that?" she asks._

"_You want something," I say to her. I can't think of what. If she wanted to confide in me, she _would_ have done it already. This is something else. But what? I toss the file in my hands back onto my desk and stand, pushing my chair in as a finishing touch. I start to move across the room toward her, but she moves around the bed and meets me halfway._

_Before I even get my hands wrapped around the small of her back, her lips are on me. The taste of her fills my mouth, the taste that only she has. I can smell her recently shampooed hair—not fruity, just clean and crisp. When I go to pull away from her, she pulls me right back, a hand looped around the back of my neck and tugging at the small hairs. She smiles against my lips._

"Soap! Hang in there, Soap! Nikolai, he's not gonna make it much longer."

"Hang on, my friend! We are almost there!"

_Thump, thump. Thump, thump_.

Helicopter blades. Nikolai. Price. Those are the voices I'm hearing. I grope at the air around me. Eventually my fingers hook around something. A vest? A shirt? I pull it down toward me until the black shadow transforms into the old man. That hat. He always wears that hat.

"Price," I manage, and then something explodes in my lungs. I have to cough to get it out, to keep it out. Metal in my mouth. Sticky, warm metal. No. Blood.

"_Bravo Six is out! Ghost, what's your status," I shout through the coms. I have a hand gripping a handle against the wall while the other is up to my ear. The old man is sitting next me and Roach is on the other side of him. It's still hard to believe Price is alive. I haven't known what to say to him. It hasn't sunk in yet, but the first thought that popped into my head was, _That's the Price I know_. "Ghost, status," I repeat as Price and I exchange looks. He's still there, behind those eyes. I can tell that he's the same man. It's like the last three years didn't even happen. "Ghost," I shout again, my foot tapping against the floor of the helo._

"_All bodies out," Ghost says. He sounds annoyed or strained or some complex mixture between the two. "There was a complication with the extraction," he says carefully._

"_What complication?" I ask, looking to the opposite end of the helo. Worm is blocked from my view by the medic leaning over him. I curse the adrenaline fresh in my veins keeping me from caring. I know he'll live, but not much more than that, and my mind is working so fast it won't even let me worry over it._

"_It's Flash," Ghost mutters. I can barely hear his voice above the sound of the helo blades, but my breath gets caught in my chest all the same, and suddenly it's like I've traded one life for another._

"_What the hell happened?" I ask, gripping the handle until the skin over my knuckles is so tight it hurts. Price watches me as he puts his hand to his ear—he doesn't even know who Flash is, but I can see the worry in his face, the same worry he had when Roach got knocked out before exfil, the same worry he had when we pulled Worm, flesh practically melted off his face, into the helo._

"_She—damn it. Archer, we need to stop the bleeding or she's not going to make it," Ghost yells into the coms._

_Roach is staring at me with the same face I imagine I'm wearing—complete fear. It's hard to turn that fear into anger and determination when there's no way to act on it. Even Price has the same look, though he doesn't look as green as Roach—despite his hope that she'll live, he's already learned to accept that we could lose people. I thought I'd already learned that, too. I did it once with my first squad. I did it again with Price. Images of Royce and Meat are still fresh in my mind. I thought I'd learned to accept losses, but now I'm not so sure. I'm not ready to accept this one._

"_Ghost, what is going on," I yell into the coms before too long._

"_Flash got thrown back by an explosion—she's in bad shape," he says through quick breathing. "Damn it, I don't have a pulse! Archer, hurry the bloody hell up!"_

"Stay with me, Soap. We're almost there," Price says, and he pulls my hand from his shirt and puts it at my side.

"_Stay with me, Flash," Archer says as he finishes setting up a blood transfusion. Other doctors are gathered around trying to stop the blood loss and to keep her breathing._

"_She's flat lining," one of them shouts._

"_Prep for defib," another says._

_Archer is the first one to respond, and he's around on the other side of her in a jiff. "Clear!" he shouts, and I can't help but blink when the paddles go off. Her body lurches, tenses, then falls limp back onto the small pool of blood collected on the gurney, and after a brief moment, an endless beeping sound echoes though the room. "Again!" Archer yells. "Clear!"_

_It beeps once then goes silent, beeps again, then continues at a slow pace that gradually speeds up, but my mind isn't put at ease. I continue to chew on what little is left of my thumb nail. Price is watching too, leaning against the wall next to me rubbing his fist on the inside of his hat over and over again. Ghost is next to him with his back turned. His balaclava is in his hands, the skull staring up at him, and he's brushing over the white image with the tips of his thumbs. _

"Price," I say again. I don't know if he can hear me.

"What is it?" he says in a quiet voice.

"Is there any word?" I mumble. The speech makes my voice gurgle as I clear my airway of more blood. My chest is hot.

He doesn't say anything. He turns to look at Nikolai and says, "We'll need help getting him inside."

"Da," Nikolai says. He speaks some Russian into the coms. The helo shifts direction for a split second, and then it's lowering us to the ground.

_Archer is covered with blood from the past few hours, a little fresh on his hands and under his fingernails and much more stained on the knees and the sleeves of his pants. He has a little smudged on his forehead—traces from swiping his hands over his buzz cut. I can even see some in his hair. He repeats the same movement once he's standing in front of us, adding the still-wet remnants from his fingers onto his head. "I don't know how she did it, but she did. She's gonna pull through," he says. The relief hits me before he finishes speaking. If she was dead, it'd be written all over his face. Still, she's not out of the woods yet._

"_What the bloody hell happened?" I ask in a quiet voice as I glance over to Ghost. He doesn't look as relieved as I feel. There's guilt fresh on his face, and my words only made it worse, but I couldn't stop them from spilling out of me. "You should have been on the helo before the bombs dropped. What happened?"_

"_She wouldn't come," says Ghost, bunching up his balaclava in his hands and wringing it back and forth. "She was still at one of the terminals—said something about gas lines. Wouldn't budge. When she finished whatever she was doing, an explosion went off nearby, threw her back. Her abdomen got speared by some shredded metal from the debris."_

"_Gas lines," Price says almost immediately after Ghost finishes speaking. "You're sure that's what she said?" Ghost nods, evidently confused by Price's peaceful approach. Price looks to me and sets his hat back on his head. "Well, now," he says with a raised brow, "looks like your girl was the one who saved our lives."_

"Price," I say again, louder this time. I cough again—more blood.

"I'll get you through this, Soap," he says.

"Has there been any word?" I ask again.

The look on his face says it all. No word. No news. No hope. I take in a sharp breath, an unconscious gesture of pain—though emotional or physical I can't tell. Another cough follows, and more blood finds its way up my throat and out of my mouth.

"_Roach? Ghost? Come in, Ghost. Do you copy? Does anyone copy?" I yell into the coms._

"_They're dead, Soap. Shepherd's cleaning house. I'm working my way back to you," Price says in that authoritative voice I've never gotten used to. He's always been the master of his emotions, subduing them whenever and wherever the situation has called for it. I've tried to emulate that all this time, but it took this for me to see that I'm not there yet._

"_Worm and… And Flash," I mutter into the coms. It's hard to say her name without picturing Shepherd's face. She was always skeptical of him, always mistrusting, even from the first time we met, and all this time she was right. Why did it have to go this far before I realized she was right? "Shepherd betrayed us," I whisper, gripping my weapon so tightly I think it might snap in half._

"_Have to trust someone to be betrayed. I never did," Price says, and I can see her when he says it, hear her saying the same words._

_The worst part is knowing that we never got to say goodbye, that I never got to tell her how I felt._

_I remember the last conversation we had with a pang of guilt. The words I said aren't clear anymore; I can only remember yelling at her. I can only remember a tight fist with one outstretched finger pointing in her direction as she sits there weakened from her injury. Her brows are in a hard line and her lips are pursed. She's not chewing on her cheeks or her knuckles or her nails. She's resolute. There's a piece of Price in her that I never saw before, or maybe it never existed until that moment. The two of them stand unwavering side by side, no guilt, no excuses, only fact._

"_There's no point in worrying about it now," Price says, pulling the cigar stub out of his mouth and flicking it into the nearby ashtray._

"_He's right. Focus on Makarov. We still have work to do," Shepherd says, and he goes over the plan, stares at maps and files, and Price looks over his shoulder, eyes locked on the data spread out before us, studying and memorizing every detail._

_Her eyes are locked on me, studying me, glancing over at the briefing only when I do, previously spoken words lingering behind them: "I can still help. Don't make me sit this out."_

_The briefing ends before I even know what Shepherd said. He clears the room. Price pats me on the shoulder and follows behind Shepherd. Her eyes follow him as he disappears through the door. She turns her head back to me, pain behind her eyes—an apology, but still conviction. "I had to do something, anything," her eyes say to me. Her stone jaw tells me there will be no apology. There's nothing to apologize for._

_My last words to her. "I have to go."_

_Her last words to me. "Be careful."_

"Out of the bloody way! Get a doctor!"

Price. Nikolai. Threads. The only threads holding me to this life.

_Thump, thump. Thump._

"Keep pressure on that wound!"

"I'm trying! Hang in there, my friend!"

Blood soaked fingers, blood soaked clothing. Proof. The only proof I was here.

_Thump. Thump._

"He needs help, now!"

"We're losing him. Charging. Three, two, one. Clear!"

_Thump._

Be careful.

Her last words: _Be careful._

The only reason left.

A reason to live.


	2. Disavowed

_"I know things change, / your world has slipped away. / I know things change, / but you're living like a soldier / who's caught in the fray." –The Goo Goo Dolls' 'Soldier'_

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><p><strong>[August 17<strong>**th**** – 06:34:12]**

**[Nick "Archer" Gray]**

**[somewhere in Russia]**

She's never gonna wake up again.

She just lays there and lays there and doesn't respond to anything I say to her.

She's still clutching the dog tags in her hands. She won't let them go. That's probably the only reason they let her keep them, here, locked up in this cell, somewhere behind enemy lines.

Maybe it's better if she doesn't wake up. Maybe it's better if she just avoids all of it. What's waiting for her? The agonizing pain of the burned flesh on the left side of her face? Of the nasty wound in her side? No, if it meant the rest of the team was still alive, she'd probably wake up in a heartbeat, face any pain the world has to throw at her, anything but the pain of knowing that the entire one-four-one is dead.

Except for us. But for how much longer?

"Flash," I say again. "Flash." Still nothing. It would be better, kinder to just let her sleep, but what if these are our last few days on this earth? Her real name. Maybe she'll respond to her real name. "Elaine," I say. It sounds strange on my tongue, like I've gone into forbidden territory; only the Captain has ever called her that.

"Just leave me alone, Archer," she says, and the words hurt.

"Nick," I tell her, and she cracks open her eyes, just a little bit. "If we're gonna die here, I want it to be with my real name."

"Nick," she repeats, and then she looks at the tags looped around her hands. She sits up, little by little. I try to help her, but she pushes me away. She never makes it all the way there, but she sits up just enough to take the chain from around her neck. There are two sets of tags already on her chain—her own, of course, but who else's? "Worm," she says as she adds the other tags to her chain, and then she tucks the empty chains into her pocket and puts her chain back around her neck before she lies back down on the cot.

"They got to him before they came for me," she explains to me.

"I thought Shepherd came too late," I say. "I guess he was just waiting for Makarov's guys to kill most of us off. That's how Toad went. We were flanked—he took a bullet right to the head."

"Do you think MacTavish and Price made it out alive?" she asks.

For a brief moment, I want to answer her with hope if only to lift her spirits a little, but the question rings in my mind, and the words that come out of my mouth are, "I don't know."

"I'll kill him," she says. "I swear, I'll kill Shepherd if it's the last thing I do."

"Generalʹnyĭ Shepherd mertv," comes a voice from the doorway.

When I look, standing behind the bars is a man—besides the usual guard—dressed just like everyone else: vest, weapons, the whole deal. His weapons are nicer, better made, but there's not a strong sense of hierarchy here. Flash and I don't say anything to him. If he's gonna speak in Russian, he may as well speak to a wall.

"General Shepherd… is dead," the man repeats, and Flash practically jumps off of the bed. I have to lean over and press two firm hands against her shoulders to keep her from hurting herself, and it's almost not enough.

"When? How?" she asks the man.

The man only smiles and says, "All of our enemies will meet the same end." He snaps his fingers and says, "Otkrytʹdverʹ. Prinesitezaklyuchennykh," and the two guards standing outside our cell doors open the gate.

The first one through the door grabs me by the arm and digs a thumb right into a bullet wound. I grind my teeth but don't bother fighting back until I see the second man go for her. "Stop," I say to the man in charge. "It's too dangerous to move her. Her injuries are too severe."

The second guard drags Flash halfway off the cot before the man in charge holds up a hand and says, "Stop." He steps through the doorway and stares at me with an unreadable expression. I half expect him to swing one at me, but he keeps walking until he gets to Flash.

"Don't hurt her," I say. The words slip out of my mouth before I know what's happening.

The man smiles at me, but he doesn't raise a finger against her. Instead, he pulls out a GSh-18 and points it at me. "Poĭdem s nami, ili ya budu strelyatʹv nego. Poĭmite? I'll shoot him," he says to her.

"Stop," she says as she glances at me, the left side of her face glistening from the moistness of her burns. "I'll do what you want."

"Good," the man says.

"At least let me help her," I say to him. He thinks about it for a few seconds, and then he gives the guard holding my arm a sharp nod. The man lets me go, and I cross the room to Flash immediately. She puts an arm around my shoulder as she leans her weight on me and stands. Within seconds, we're on our way out of the cell heading step by careful step to somewhere.

The place looks like a fortress, kind of like the gulag but an older building. There's ancient grime caked on the brick walls, which look almost green against the yellow lighting spanning the hallways. There are other prisoners, too, probably Russian loyalists or even ultranationalist allies that were considered too dangerous or too untrustworthy to let loose—the same type they were holding in the gulag at Petropavlovsk.

There are no windows anywhere, no way for us to get any idea of where we are—not that I'd be able to tell anyway, not unless there was some great landmark for me to see. I figure there's no point in asking the guards. What would they tell us? Why would it matter? We're dead already—probably heading to line up for the firing squad right now.

Flash has the same thought. "Think this is it?" she asks.

I shrug. "I don't know."

"You know what the worst part is?" she asks, and her voice cracks just the slightest bit.

"What?"

"At best, we'll be taken off the record," she says. "At worst, we'll all die as enemies." A pause. "I couldn't care less about myself, but I don't want that for them. Or for you."

"Neither do I," I tell her.

"Molchi," one of the guards says as he hits the back of my leg with the butt of his AK, and I take his meaning even without knowing Russian.

The room they take us to is hardly different from the others except for all of the stuff that's sitting inside it—a lot of electronics, monitors, radios, that sort of thing. And of course in the center is a table and a few chairs. I can picture maps and photos spread out on this table normally, but they probably cleared it off just for us. How nice of 'em.

The two guards move in and push the table and chairs off to the side, leaving us to stand in the center of the room and face the large monitor centered on the wall. There, standing still, Flash takes her arm from around my shoulder and tries to stand on her own. She stumbles at first, but once she gains her bearings she stands at almost her full height, hunching only slightly on the left side of her body to keep strain off of her wound. The right side of her face is completely clear of any burns, and for a moment she looks just like she always used to. When she turns to look at me, the burns on her cheek greet me and the illusion is gone.

I know who the man is before our escort says his name, before his face comes up on the monitor, without even knowing his face that well at all. I know because of the way Flash reacts when his mug pops up on the large screen before us, the way she takes an uncertain step backwards and furrows her brows, the way she takes a deep breath to regain her nerves–or maybe to calm them down.

"Komandir," our escort says, "vot oni."

"You worked for Shepherd," the man on the screen says. It's the first time I've ever heard his voice. His accent is crisp, clear, as if he's known English for many years. His words aren't a question, and Flash doesn't say anything to him, so I keep my mouth shut too. "You know who I am?" he asks.

Flash's lips form a hard line as she simply says, "Makarov."

His lips barely make a smile and he says, "How does it feel to be the last of your kind?"

Flash catches eyes with me and a hint of regret flickers across her face. When she looks back to the screen, she makes eye contact with Makarov and doesn't look away, but she still doesn't say anything. I continue to follow her lead–I'll only say something if she does.

Makarov continues talking. "Shepherd used you and threw you out with the rest of the trash, and no one lifted a finger to stop him," he says.

"Why haven't you killed us yet?" Flash asks. "Is there a point to this conversation?" I can hear the strain in her voice, see the way her hand twitches in reaction to a stab of pain. She stills it, stops herself from reaching up and holding her side, and I realize this is a game between them only I don't know the rules or how to win.

Makarov smirks and puffs out a laugh and then his poker face is back again within seconds. "Shepherd thought your usefulness had run its course. So? How does it feel?" he asks. Then, getting closer to the camera, he says again, "How does it feel to be used and discarded?"

She glances at me again, and I can't read her expression. "If Shepherd were still alive," she says, "I'd kill him myself." Makarov sneers at that, and the sneer stays this time. "You still haven't answered my question," Flash says.

"Shepherd thought your usefulness had run out," Makarov repeats, "but I do not."

"What, and you think I'd help you?" she asks. She spares a look at me and says, "You think either of us would help you?"

"We have ways of making you help us, even if you're unwilling," Makarov says, and he looks at me with a chilling look, a look that makes the muscles in my neck go tense. Torture. We're all thinking it, everyone in the room. He'd torture one of us to make the other one help. I have to bite my tongue and force my face to freeze because I know. I know that if they tortured her to get me to help them, I'd do it without a second thought. I glance to Flash and she's looking at me, staring with a poker face that's probably only possible because half of her face has been seared off and because she's run out of strength from bawling for the last twenty-four hours.

"And if you _are_ willing," Makarov starts, "well, we have ways of determining that too." He nods his head sharply to the man behind us and says, "Alexi." The man steps between us and bends over, and Makarov says, "But this offer is only extended to one of you."

The man named Alexi steps away, and between our feet is a single handgun. Flash's eyes catch with mine again–horror sweeps across her eyes for only the slightest second, or maybe her expression just mimics mine. The two guards behind us have their guns trained on us, but the thought of turning around and shooting them never crosses my mind. I can only think of the handgun, the GSh-18 sitting on the floor between the two of us, and what it means.

A chance. A chance to do something and keep moving forward. A chance to live up to our mission. A chance to get close to Makarov. A chance to complete Operation Kingfish. All I'd have to do is pick up the gun and shoot.

But when I see her face, I don't see a target. I see _her_. I see Flash–no, I see Elaine. I don't see the burns on her face or the blood on her shirt. I see the tags around her neck. I see the hole in her heart. I hear her words in my ears: _I don't want that for them_. It would be so easy to pick up the gun and pull the trigger. If it were anyone else standing here before me, I might. I'd keep going, keep fighting until I got to the man himself, and then I'd bring him down. Shepherd's dead. Makarov is the only enemy left. And Elaine is the only thing standing between me and killing him.

But if I let her die, the Captain would never forgive me. I'd never forgive myself. She's the only thing I have left. And her? _This _is the only thing _she_ has left, this mission, this purpose.

She reaches for the gun, and I let her. She's slow to bend over. Her breath escapes her lungs in quick bursts to combat the pain of the wound in her side. I could knock her back, but I don't. I could reach for the gun myself. But I don't. And eventually the gun is staring at me, one quivering hole that opens into a black oblivion, and waiting somewhere inside is a single bullet.

"Do it," I say. One of her brows flinches, but she keeps her expression static. "You want revenge against Shepherd? Well, this is the only way to get it," I say, and her brows furrow deeper. I spot her jaw working, and I know she's catching on. _This is all a game, _I think, _and this is the only way we're gonna win_.

I step toward oblivion, closer and closer until the gun is inches away from my face. "If only the Captain could see you now," I say, and I have to keep my voice even.

"And what if he could?" she says as she ups her chin toward me. Her voice is even too. She's on board. She understands.

"You've always been more concerned with saving your own life," I lie. "That's why Roach and Ghost died. That's why Meat and Royce died." That one hits her hard, I can see it in her eyes, but she holds it in somehow, redirects the pain into anger and moves forward until the barrel of the gun is up against my forehead.

"You think I joined the military so I could sacrifice my life for my country?" she asks. "Like the Captain did? Like Meat and Royce did? Like those suckers in Afghanistan five years ago?" Her chest tenses when she says all of this, like she has to force out the air just to form the words. Then she puffs out a gasp; a mask–leftover air acting as a laugh in place of a cry. "I wasn't gonna die there with them, and I sure as hell ain't gonna die here with _you_," she says.

"You're really gonna do this?" I ask, and I let my voice break this time. "You're really gonna shoot me?"

"If it means I get to keep my skin? Hell yeah," she says.

I let out a puff, my own mask. "I should have known. I should have known all this time," I say, and I push against the gun with my head. "Our friendship's really meant nothing to you?" I let my voice break again.

"It's meant my next paycheck," she says, and she pushes back.

Then there's silence; a single moment, the longest second in infinity fills my ears. _Do it_, I think. _Do it. This is our only chance_. And it's like she can hear me, like she knows what I'm thinking. And I feel like I can hear her back. _I'm sorry,_ her eyes say. _This is the only way_, they say. _I'll finish this. It will all be over soon._

Hesitance.

I feel it in the air, and I know I have to catch it and destroy it before it eats her up, before it eats either of us up.

Another puff. "Just do it," I say. I gulp.

She braces her finger against the trigger. She clenches her jaw. She draws her brows together. She gives me the meanest look she can possibly give me. Her eyes glisten. She smiles. "Gladly," she says.

I've always wondered if you'd hear the sound of the gunshot before the bullet killed you at this range.

I guess you do.

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><p><strong>AN: **Archer's real name is made up in this chapter. Also, the Russian is phonetic spelling gotten from Google Translate. Feel free to correct me if any of it is wrong.

One of the readers (_Lenchen94_) suggested that maybe Price and Flash are related. That's an interesting idea! I've never given it much thought... Well, anything is possible!

As always, I hope everyone is enjoying.

All love~

HK


	3. The Healthy Human Mind

"_To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." -Friedrich Nietzsche_

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><p><strong>[August 17<strong>**th**** – 09:51:37]**

**[John Price]**

**[Himachal Pradesh, India]**

The healthy human mind doesn't wake up in the morning thinking this is its last day on earth.

"Out of the bloody way! Get a doctor!"

If ever there was a God, He's long gone from this place now.

"He's not going to make it…"

We set out to save the world, but we can't even save ourselves.

"He'll make it!"

But the phoenix needs to die before it can be reborn.

That's how it all started. Makarov was just one more pissant on the face of this earth. Even when Operation Kingfish started, I thought we'd be home in time for dinner. Captured by Makarov's men, held captive in a frozen hell for three years—all Makarov did was piss me off, renew my resolve. When you push a man, he's gonna push back.

It will be the same with Soap, too.

Roach, Ghost, Flash, all of them—dead. A man can regret all he wants, but it doesn't get him far. Rage—now, rage'll get a man somewhere. Rage like that doesn't make you want to give up. It keeps you moving, even if you're going forward blind.

A dead comrade is a stronger symbol than a living enemy.

They'll keep pushing us forward, all of them. They'll keep us in line. They'll remind us our purpose. They may be gone, every single one of them, but they're not out of this yet, and neither are we.

"Price, we've got vital signs but they're weak," Nikolai says. "Soap won't last without proper attention."

"He's a hard bastard. Trust me," I say, "he'll make it." He doesn't know how strong Soap is. He never gives up. He didn't give up when Zakhaev had us down or when Shepherd had us pinned. He's not gonna give up now. Give the man the right tools, and he'll make it through anything. If he _does_ die here, then it's my fault.

The explosions and the gunfire don't surprise me when they come. You spend enough time in this trade, and nothing does anymore, not explosions or gunfire, not bullet or stab wounds, not blood or death. Be it peace or war, there's always something left to do. The world will always need people like us. It's just like they say: only the dead have seen the end of war.

Yuri. Ex-Spetsnaz. One of the loyalists. Hates Makarov more than me? Not likely. Still, as Nikolai introduces him, I know that he and I aren't so different. Everyone has their own battle to fight. Without a reason to fight that's your own, you may as well put a gun to your own head and fire. He has his own reason to fight; I can see it in his eyes. When Nikolai says, "Do whatever this man says," I know he'll listen. We're all in this together—different battles, but they're all part of the same war, and our goals lead us to the same place.

The Russian ultranationalists fall one after the other. They don't know what it is they're _really_ fighting for. Makarov lit the match, and the whole world caught on fire. But we, we know. We were at the center of it when it all began, which is why it falls to us to stop it before all that's left of the world is a pile of ash.

Battling through the village feels like a recurring dream—people run screaming from blood and death, faceless soldiers march through the streets, and the gunfire and explosions never stop. In the end, the words "we need to get Soap to the chopper" aren't any different from "get to the LZ" or "rendezvous at site Bravo." The basic goal is the same, and blowing holes through faceless heads is like muscle memory.

The healthy human mind doesn't wake up in the morning thinking this is its last day on earth.

That's how we know we're not crazy. Each man we kill is just another way to survive. Each time Soap opens his eyes is just his natural inclination to live. Even thrown over Nikolai's shoulder, his mind knows he still has to do his part. When basic instinct isn't enough, it doesn't hurt to have a few friends.

Muscle memory and instinct though it may be, getting through the village is a bitch. Yuri lives up to expectations—he's every bit Nikolai's best man as he implied. Clean, surgical, not quite Soap's grace, but he's got a style of his own. Reckless, up close and personal, and decisive. He's been fighting for years, and the short years of peace up to now seem to mean less to him than they do even to me. We get to Nikolai's weapons cache quickly, and without Yuri, it may not have been possible at all.

The UGV in the basement looks as good as new and better than what I was hoping for. "Unmanned ground vehicle," I say. "Two centimeter armor plating, mounted mini-gun, and grenade launcher. Controls are going to be in Russian. Yuri, you're up."

No one asks questions. We keep moving—through the buildings and houses, to the outskirts of the village, to the scaffolding-covered landing pad on the Cliffside bordering the edge of town—and every step of the way Yuri pulls through. He leads us to the LZ and makes excellent use of the UGV—precise shooting, well-timed grenades, and his reflexes are faster than mine would have been. It's clearly not the first time he's operated the UGV.

Soap pulls through every step of the way, too. He's never unconscious for more than a few minutes. He hangs on to whatever threads of strength his body has left. He finds that resolve, that rage that pulls him over to the right side of the human condition, maybe never completely aware, but alive. I told Nikolai the bastard is tough.

He comes around a little more once he's safely on the chopper, and, for the first time in hours, he looks at me and knows that I'm there. "Sight for sore eyes, old man," he squeezes out.

"Hang in there, Soap. We're almost out of here," I say to him.

"Where is here?" he asks, and I think about how to answer that. "Himachal Pradesh" is one possible answer. "India" is another. "Getting shot out our arses" is also an acceptable answer. Even "another suicide mission" would work.

"You don't wanna know," I tell him eventually, and he lets out a whisper of a laugh before he closes his eyes again. I put my hand up to my ear and say, "Yuri, all bodies on. We're waiting on you! Run to the chopper! Move!"

"On my way," Yuri says into my ear.

I lean out the door and shoot down a few hostiles inbound to our position and a few more when they show up. "Price," I hear Nikolai shout, "More helicopters inbound!"

"Yuri," I yell into the coms, "pick up the pace!"

"Almost there," he says, his voice calmer than a dead man in his grave.

I shoot down another few tangos then turn to see Yuri heading toward us just in time. He runs across the trampled grass, dodges around some debris, and makes his way closer to the LZ. I see the enemy helo closing in on us. It fires just as Yuri's foot hits the scaffolding. "Look out," I yell into the coms.

Too late. The missile from the helo sails through the air and explodes when it makes impact with the cliff just below him. The scaffolding falls, and Yuri with it, until both he and the debris are sliding down the side of the cliff toward the ridge and the river below.

"Nikolai, take us up! Take us up," I yell, and the helo takes off just as Nikolai takes out the enemy bird with his weapons. He hovers the helo over the cliff side just in time for me to spot Yuri going over the edge of the ridge. "Head downriver," I yell to Nikolai, and the chopper moves.

I've lost more allies than I care to count. Yuri isn't Yuri when I see him go over the edge, when his body slaps against the surface of the river water below. He's everyone, living or dead, who's ever needed their arse pulled out of the fire: MacMillan, Gaz, Soap, Roach, Griggs, Nikolai—everyone I've ever fought alongside. The living remind us of what we could have lost. The dead remind us of what we have lost.

Living. What we can lose. I'm not gonna add Yuri to the list of what we've lost. He's not gonna die on my watch.

My eyes scrape over the surface of the water and search for any sign that he's still alive. Three times I see bits of debris that almost look like him from a distance, and then I see him surface and go under again, once, twice, until he grabs hold of a rock and hangs on for all he's worth.

"There he is! There's Yuri," Nikolai shouts and he moves the chopper into position. I lower down a ladder once we're hovering above him. _Add Yuri to the list of the living_, I think as he grabs onto the ladder below. Another one of Nikolai's operatives helps me pull the ladder up.

When Yuri's close enough to the edge, I reach two hands over, grab him by the vest, and haul him up. "We've got Yuri," I say to Nikolai once Yuri is all the way in.

"Who the bloody hell's Yuri?" Soap asks from the gurney that's strapped to the wall. His eyes are open again, and he seems more aware of his surroundings this time.

"Good to hear your voice, my friend," Nikolai shouts from the front of the helo.

"See? Tough bastard," I say to no one in particular.

"What's our next step?" Soap asks me with a few grunts.

I can't help but laugh at that. "Take it easy, lad," I say. "First step is getting you back on your feet."

"I want him dead, Price," he says. "I've got my own loose ends to tie."

"All things in good time," I say to him. "You could still die yourself, you know."

"I'm willing to risk it," he says.

"Don't be stupid. They're dead, Soap, and rushing to the finish line isn't gonna bring them back any more than killing Shepherd did. That goes for Worm and Flash, too," I say. His face cringes when I make mention of the girl.

"This isn't about revenge, old man," Soap whispers. "This is about finishing what she—what we started. Makarov has to die."

_She_. The girl. This isn't just about Ghost or Roach or the other members of the one-four-one. _She_ meant something to him, something more than just a comrade, something more than just a friend. _They were together. A pair._ _Lovers_. Of course. And after what happened at the submarine base, after what I made her do, _this_ was Soap losing her for the _second_ time. And it's my fault.

"I know," I say to Soap. "We'll finish it." We're not done. We're not at the endgame yet. Our dead comrades are still counting on us. History is still in our hands. We still have an objective, an agenda, a purpose. We will keep moving forward. We will survive. Makarov will die.

_These_ are the thoughts of the healthy human mind, and the rest? The rest is just an afterthought.


	4. Perchance to Dream

_"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal." -From a headstone in Ireland_

* * *

><p><strong><strong>[August 31<strong>**st**** – 03:53:57]****

**[John "Soap" MacTavish]**

**[Tibet, China]**

It's been three years since I was last lying in a bed like this. For most people, lying in a bed means a day off, sleeping in. For a soldier, lying in a bed means you don't have the strength to fight. It's one of the worst feelings in the world, for sure. When you have someone to mourn, what better way to do it than by fighting? But in a bed, the only thing you can do is think.

Five years ago, it was Gaz and Griggs and the rest of the team. I still couldn't believe we went down the way we did. At the time, I thought the greatest disasters always happened after the greatest victories. We had stopped the base from launching IRBMs—that was a victory, for sure. And then Zakhaev killed all of us. Well, almost all of us. I spent two months bedridden with no way to mourn my lost friends.

Still, you get back up, you push harder, you move forward. Until it happens again. Price. When Price was listed KIA, I mourned him for three years. I don't know if I ever stopped before we found out he was alive. In a way, it doesn't really matter. The man responsible was still alive, _is_ still alive. With Zakhaev dead, it felt like Gaz and the others had been avenged. The man responsible for what happened to Price _still_ hadn't paid back that debt. There was no victory there.

Then there's Elaine.

Shepherd is dead, sure. The man responsible _has_ paid, but it doesn't feel like it, and there's only one reason why that is: Makarov is the one who made Shepherd's actions possible. Or maybe I'm just kidding myself. Maybe I'll never get over it—sitting here in this bed, it sure doesn't feel like it. This will kill me for the rest of my life. Victory isn't even a question anymore. I've lost everything I have except for Price and the will to keep moving forward. There'll be no more victories after this.

Dreams. Dreams are about the worst facet reality has to offer. Anything can happen in them—you can fly, you can breathe underwater, run without ever getting tired, get stabbed and not die, lift heavy objects with ease. The realm of dreams is full of all sorts of physical freedoms, but they're still just another outlet for the truth. Good things, bad things, but true things—they all come out in dreams.

For me, dreams come about as often as a solar eclipse. They almost never happen, but, when they do, it's always special, not always in a good way, and sometimes it's not easy to tell the difference between the two.

Maybe it's because it's that time of the morning, but I dream of the mess, of smoking cigars and playing card games with Ghost—a good dream, to start. Even though I know I'm dreaming, it's good to be there, good to see his face, to hear his voice. In the back of my mind, I know that it's just a dream, that he's really dead, that I'm never going to see him again, but I fall into the dream and enjoy the early morning company.

Ghost knew more about my life than anyone else. Other than Shepherd and of course Price, no one knew that I was in the SAS, that I was part of the team that went after Zakhaev, at least not until much later. It was easier that way, easier not to think about it, easier not to worry about what would happen in future missions, even easier to gain respect on my own terms—I didn't want people to think I'd gotten my position just because I'd survived a suicide mission.

For a long time, the only reason Ghost knew about it was because I knew about all of his dark secrets. Shepherd was the one who made the call to recruit him, but only after Price and I had heard about him. After everything that had happened to him—torture and being buried alive right at the top of the list—he had to be one messed up mind. Most people wouldn't have taken him, but it was one of the reasons Price and I wanted him. Were any of us really so different? We didn't think so. We were all messed up in some way or another—it comes with the trade, I guess. The important part was that we knew, more than most, how badly this world needed to be kept in check. That was why I told him—at first, just the basics, and later everything.

I think of all of this when I dream of the mess, when I see Ghost sitting there with his balaclava lying on the table between us. A skull. I don't remember all of the details, but I always think of the Day of the Dead, like it happens every single day for Ghost.

"After what happened, why did you decide you wanted to stay in the SAS?" I ask him. The question didn't come out like this at first, not for real. It was inarticulate, all over the place, and I had to ask a counter question to make more sense of the first one. Something along the lines of, _why didn't you leave on honorable discharge or something_? But it's what I wanted to say, what I would have said back then if my mind had been right—a facet of the truth.

"Because," he says, and I remember that he didn't answer me this quickly either. During the real conversation, he ignored me for a long time, tried to pretend I didn't ask the question at all. "It wouldn't have mattered where I was, those memories will always follow me around. I'd rather keep myself busy doing something important." This was more or less what he'd actually said.

"You never wish you weren't in this line of work?" I ask him.

"Where is this coming from?" he says while I tap my cigar ash into the ashtray that's lying between us. For real, I had been careless, burned my finger on the tip of the cigar because I wasn't paying attention, but in this dream, I tap the burning edge and nothing happens, no pain, no wound, no nothing—physical freedoms.

"I feel like I'm trying to mix two worlds here," I say to him.

"Mix two worlds? What the bloody hell are you talking about?" he asks me, only I know that, for real, he didn't really ask me. It was a look, the placement of his eyebrows on his face, the slope that his mouth made, a look that could have easily made me imagine those words in my head, and now I'm hearing them in a dream. Maybe this is how the human mind misconstrues memories.

"It's just—when you become a soldier, you give up on the idea of having a normal life, don't you?" I ask.

"Not everyone," Ghost says, "but guys like us? Yeah, I guess so."

"Guys like us, because we know the importance of our work," I say. "We can't let anything get in the way of that." _Right?_

"Maybe," Ghost says after taking a drag.

"Maybe recruiting Flash was a bad idea," I say.

"Wait, what?" Ghost mutters. "Flash is a great member of the team…"

"I thought you didn't like her," I scoff.

"Well," Ghost says, and he takes another drag. "I wasn't sure about her at first. I was thinking of Operation Kingfish, I guess, of you and Sandman and Price. If any of us had disobeyed Price and gone back for him, he wouldn't have been the only one KIA. But Flash did the right thing going after you."

"I kissed her," I say, and I remember how much my head hurt when I originally said these words.

"…What?"

"I don't know what I was thinking."

"Wait, you _kissed_ her?"

"I don't think she knew how to react."

"_When_ did you _kiss_ her?"

"I walked out, and we haven't spoken since."

"You are definitely a different brand of crazy," he says with a puff of air.

_You're telling me, _I'm thinking, and the conversation ends. In real life, it went on. We talked about Elaine a lot, and probably more about my feelings than I really remember now. But this isn't real life. This is a dream, and in this dream the conversation ends no matter how much I don't want it to, but Ghost is still sitting in front of me.

We're not in the mess anymore. We're not anywhere, really. It's one of those dreams where you're sort of disembodied—you can't see or feel your physical body, but you know that it's there. I can still see Ghost, at least I think I can, or maybe I'm just hearing the sound of his voice and my mind thinks I'm seeing him before me.

"You weren't looking for a normal life," Ghost says. "You and Flash, you just happened, and there's nothing wrong with that," he says—words that he never really said, not even remotely.

"It sounds to me like you're saying we should jump in blind and play it by ear," a voice says, but it isn't Ghost. _Her_ words. Elaine's words.

_I didn't jump in blind. I knew what I was doing, what I was risking. It was all worth it,_ I think. It didn't last forever. Nothing lasts forever–not her sweet lips, not her warm skin, not her unwavering honesty, not her rigid selflessness–but every moment was worth it.

The next thing I know, I'm wide awake. Dreams. My facet of the truth. It was painful, but I know now: it was still a good dream. _I already knew I needed to move forward, and now I can do it with no strings attached. Even if I move forward, I know now that it's okay to look back. I won't be getting stuck in the past. I'll be seeing the reason why I'm looking to the future._

"You should be getting some rest, Soap," Price says as he appears in the doorway. He's not wearing his hat—I rarely ever see that.

"'I've been thinking about everything," I say to him.

He sits down and leans on his knees. It's weird thinking neither of us is out there fighting. The entire world is at war, and we're hiding away. Nikolai's last safe haven—it seems like he's been ready for something like this to happen all along. Then again, after the ultranationalists took control of Russian office after Zakhaev's death, it's no wonder the loyalists have been building up their strength and resources.

"We were careless," Price says to me. "We should have seen Shepherd coming."

"She never trusted him. I think Elaine always had a feeling," I say. "She'd been telling me for three years, and I never listened—_really_ listened. That's the worst part."

"You and the girl," Price starts, but he doesn't finish.

I have to force out a laugh. If I got a nickel for every time Price got sentimental on me, I wouldn't make it very far. "Don't tell me that I went too far, old man. I already know it."

"We all make our own decisions," Price says as he laughs back. "I'm not here to tell you right from wrong."

"I'd do it all over again," I say. "I don't regret getting myself involved with her. The only thing I do regret is letting Shepherd turn against us, and that's already been dealt with."

"Good," Price says. "Then it's time to move forward."

"You got that right," I say. "What's the status of the war?"

"Well, it looks like our little stunt with the SLBMs gave the States the edge they needed to push the Russian forces off the coast," Price explains. "They've deployed in Europe. All of the big players are in the game now."

"That 'stunt,'" I say. "Right." I still don't know how to feel about it. It _did_ save lives, Price is right about that. That EMP disabled most of the Russian invasion force. It's not even the act itself that bothers me anymore. "I just never got to talk to her about it," I say out loud. "And all of the last words we _didn't_ say to each other are still swirling around in my head."

"What are you gonna do about it?" Price says with a knowing look in his eyes.

"Kill Makarov," I say, and I think back to my dream and smile. "What else? As soon as he goes back on the grid, I'm gonna hunt him down. Didn't we cover this already?"

Price smiles. "Just making sure your head is in the game," he says.

"I may be on the bench right now, old man, but I've still got my eyes open," I say. "And I'm not just doing it for her. We still have a world to save."

The two of us sit there for a few minutes in silence until Price leans on his knees and stands up. "Nikolai has birds in as many places as he can. If Makarov so much as sneezes, we'll hear about it," he says.

"I hope so."

He starts toward the door and stops when he hits the threshold. "It was her choice," he says.

"What?"

"She asked me if she could help, and without her I wouldn't have been able to launch those missiles. It was her decision," says Price. "For what it's worth, Soap, she made the right one. We've gotta keep living up to that."

I smile at him–and at her somewhere in the back of my mind–and say, "I know."


	5. Blank

"_Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are." –Bertolt Brecht_

* * *

><p><strong><strong>[September 1<strong>**st**** – 08:34:58]****

**[Elaine "Flash" Henderson]**

**[somewhere in Russia]**

Looking at my reflection in the glass, nothing looks the same at all, and I don't just mean the dressings on my side wound or the healing burns on my face or even the way my hair is cropped. I've lost a bit of weight, too, and my eyes look sunken in what with the dark circles around them. I also feel different. My hands feel heavy and my chest feels empty. It's like everything that made me who I was before is completely gone now.

I wince when the adhesive keeping my dressings over my wound are pulled away from my skin. The wound is still healing, so the skin around it is still tender. When the bandages are completely pulled away, I can see a medley of yellow and purple bruising coloring the edges of the wound. The wound itself is still seeping bits of pus and blood in between the sutures that are holding it together, but not as much as it was. The back side probably looks the same if not worse. There's probably more bruising, too, from when I landed on my back rolling out of that chopper days and days ago. To top it all off, the residue from the adhesive leaves a brown and black square around my wounds on both sides. I'm one mess off dirt, pus, grime, and blood.

"This is definitely going to leave a scar."

"You don't have to be so gentle, Archer. I'll be fine," I say.

Archer is sitting before me cleaning and redressing the wounds as carefully as possible. He never lets his fingers touch my skin more than what's necessary for the adhesive to stick a new bandage on. His hands are deft and meticulous, something you might not expect of a guy who handles guns all the time. War isn't really the best environment to learn how to be gentle.

"I don't want to put you through more pain than you've already been through," he says as he glances up at me from under the ridge of his brows.

"Please," I scoff, and then I wince when the muscles around my wound tense. "We're in deep now. There's no point in worrying about the little things."

"If you think this wound is a 'little thing,' then I don't know how you've survived in this life as long as you have," Archer says. "It almost killed you more than once now."

"Hey," I say to him, "you were ready to die so we could do this. What's a little pain by comparison?"

I can still remember pulling the trigger like it happened yesterday, how difficult it was, how it felt. I didn't know what I was going to do when I picked that handgun up. I thought maybe it was a way out, I guess. I could have pulled the trigger for myself, but that wasn't my plan. I figured I'd shoot that guy, Alexi, and the two guards if I had the chance to. If they shot me afterward, if I died afterward, it wouldn't have matter. I thought I was dead already anyway.

And then Archer started saying all those things. He wanted this. He wanted a way for us to continue our mission. One look was all it took, and I knew. Playing along with him was hard. Pointing the gun at him was even harder. All of the things I said to make our little ploy believable tore my heart right out of my chest. But the hardest thing that I ever had to do under my own power was pull that trigger. My heart stopped in my chest in that moment. My ears went numb. My eyes went dry.

And the bullet was a blank.

Makarov was just playing with us, seeing how far we were willing to go. He still doesn't trust us. He kept the two of us imprisoned separately for two weeks under armed guard. Even now, he has two guards watching us at all times, and Alexi oversees all of our actions. Still, Makarov manipulated us. He manipulated both of us into doing what he wanted, just like he said he would. Now he knows that I was willing to kill Archer for this opportunity, even if it was just to get closer to him. He also knows that Archer will do anything for him, even face a bullet, just to make sure that I don't get hurt. He controlled the unwilling side of us and showed how we were willing all in one move. One move was all it took.

But he hasn't won yet. Archer and I haven't said a word to each other about the event since it happened. The only way to be sure Makarov doesn't know our plans is by not talking about it. We have to rely completely on instinct, completely on how well we know what the other is thinking. It's a plan without a plan, a plan that doesn't exist. It reminds me of my undercover op into Jengo Kwame's factory that went wrong, only this time there's no one to report back to when the mission is over. When the mission is over, we'll be done.

"Yeah, well," Archer mutters as he finishes putting a new bandage on my back. He moves on to examining my face and moves between me and the window that's holding my reflection. "Try not to endure too much pain. It's hard enough knowing that you're the leverage they're using to keep me here." He gives off a harrowing sigh as his eyes hover over the moist red skin spanning my cheek from my nose to my ear. "This is gonna scar too."

"At least it missed my eye," I say to him. "I'm gonna need it later."

"Very funny," he says, but he doesn't smile at the half-baked joke. He hasn't smiled since we were taken captive. It might all just be part of the act, but I don't know.

Archer moves away from me and sighs again. "Well, at least it's healing well, unlike that hole in your side. It _would_ be healing well if you hadn't abused it so much."

"What can I say?" I ask with a shrug. "I had shit to do." Understatement of the century. "So, when can I get back in the game?"

"If you're asking when you can start jumping out of helicopters and jumping into fires again, the answer is not for a long time," Archer says, "but I figure you can get back to the simple side of the job in a couple of weeks."

"The _simple_ side of the job? I wasn't aware we had one of those."

"Well," he says as he throws my old dressings in a garbage can, "compared to the last few weeks, shooting a few people from a distance shouldn't be so hard."

"You assume that's what Makarov is gonna have us doing," I remind him.

He snorts. "You think he'd send us on covert ops? No, I think we're more useful to him as expendable resources than trained soldiers."

"Either way, I'd better keep brushing up on my Russian," I say.

He looks over at me with his eyebrows drawn together and says, "You're learning Russian? Since when?"

"Since we landed in this situation," I say. "It's surprisingly easy to pick up a few terms when everyone around you is speaking in Russian. The guards will even talk to me now."

Archer snorts again, and I think I see a hint of a smirk creep up the corner of his mouth. "So, what have you learned?"

"Well, I've learned how to say gun and… I've learned how to say shut up," I say to him with a smile.

"So the guards still aren't that friendly after all," Archer replies, and a smile finally falls across his face. "Still, you've probably got the right idea. I guess I should start trying to pick up on it too," he says, and then he sits down in the bed across from mine and folds his hands in his lap. "Hey, can I ask you something?"

"You can try," I say cajolingly.

"Did you mean what you said?"

"About what?"

"That our friendship hasn't meant anything to you," he says.

A dangerous question. It comes too close to revealing our ploy—you never know who's listening—and, from the careful look he's shooting in my direction from under the ridge of his brows, I think he knows it.

"I meant it just as much as you meant what you said about the Captain," I say to him with a smirk. The corners of his mouth twitch, but he doesn't smile. Still, a relieved sigh escapes him. Everything is still okay between us.

"After our little 'test of sincerity,' I thought they'd taken you away to kill you after all," he says.

I say, "Nope, still here." Barely. "And technically it was _my_ test of sincerity. You aren't here because you want to be here. You're just here because you have to be here. What a pathetic predicament," I say, and he has to know that I'm not being serious.

"Well?" a voice asks. It's our head captor that comes into the room; Alexi Mikhailov, complete with a vest and an AK-47. "What's your prognosis of her condition, _doctor_?" he spits, and Archer rolls his eyes.

"Your own doctors can tell you that, I'm sure," Archer says.

Alexi says, "Yes, they could. I want to hear _your_ opinion."

Archer gives me a passing glance before he says, "Her wound is working on closing up, but I think she should take it easy for the time being."

"Interesting assessment," Alexi says with a smile. He looks at me. "A ty? What do you think?"

I take less than three seconds to think of an answer. "I think I'm tired of getting shot at. But if you plan on paying me, I might be persuaded to get to work sooner," I say.

Alexi keeps his eyes on me and then laughs. "My budem delatʹ tak, kak govorit doctor," he says. He looks to Archer and adds, "As for you, the Commander is ready to put you to work."

"Just me? We weren't going to work together?" Archer asks as he gestures toward me.

Alexi just laughs. "Parting is such sweet sorrow," he says, and then he hits Archer with the butt of his AK and says, "Come."

Archer doesn't budge at first. He looks over to me and stares. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I feel like he's looking at the burns on my face. He's thinking about what would have happened if he hadn't pulled me out of the fire, I just know it. But I don't say anything. There's nothing to say without revealing more of ourselves to Alexi than we want to.

Alexi picks up on Archer's feelings anyway, though. He follows the path of Archer's eyes over to me and a sneer spreads across his face. "Wondering if you'll ever see her again?" Alexi asks. "That will be entirely up to you." He hits Archer with the butt of his rifle again and says, "Now."

Archer stares for one moment longer. Then he stands and moves past Alexi and through the threshold, and I can see my reflection in the window again. Alexi follows Archer toward the door but stops before he leaves and turns back to look at me. "It won't be long before Makarov has a job for you. I suggest you ready yourself," he says, and then he's gone. Two new armed guards come into the room in his place and slam and lock the door behind them.

It's just me and them. The thought crosses my mind a few times to take them out, to fight my way out of this fortress and get away. Some part of my brain screams at me to do it, the same part of my brain that kicked me into gear when I needed to kill Jengo Kwame. I suppress it. Not only do I have no idea where I am, but I have nowhere to go back to. Even though I suppress the feeling, my mind keeps thinking about how it's just me and them—me and them and my reflection in the barred window.

The two guards are two that I haven't seen in a long time. Alexi or Makarov—one of the two—has done an astounding job of making sure nothing here ever feels too comfortable. The same two guards watch me for twelve hours at a time, and then two guards come in to replacement. Until now, I haven't seen any of them more than once. Maybe Makarov is concerned about losing the loyalty of his men. Maybe he's concerned that his soldiers will hit a sensitive streak and guilt-trip themselves about detaining a woman. Maybe he just doesn't want me getting too familiar with his men—maybe he wants to keep me on edge. He'd be right to think that way, too. A soldier on edge is more effective than a complacent soldier.

I try to stare at my reflection, to find some comfort in it, but it doesn't help. My face isn't how I remember it. The person I see in the glass doesn't look like me, and the thought almost makes me more uncomfortable than the two sentries whispering to each other by the door. What do you do when you wake up as a different person?

I try to listen to what the two men are saying to each other, try to catch on to any similar words, any patterns, anything I can use to try and pinpoint what they're saying to each other. "Schitaete li vy, boss budet vozrazhatʹ?" one asks the other, and none of the words sound like the few I know. Neither of them makes direct eye contact with me, which makes reading their body language and facial expressions almost impossible.

So I stop trying. I stop listening to what the two goons are saying and I stop thinking about the fact that it's just me and them in this room alone and I stop looking at my reflection in the window. Instead, I lay down on my bed on my right side and stare at the garbage can across the room holding my blood and pus-covered bandages, and I try to sleep. I try to sleep and wonder if the world that I know will ever be the same again. I hope that, when this is all over, maybe—just maybe—I'll have more than my own alien reflection to keep me company.


	6. Picking Up the Pieces

"_The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." -Alan Watts_

* * *

><p><strong>[September 16<strong>**th**** – 19:05:11]**

**[John "Soap" MacTavish]**

**[Bamako, Mali]**

The moon feels like a red searchlight poking through the clouds looking for us, or maybe it's looking for one peaceful place left on this planet. The Russians and the allied forces of the U.S. and the U.K. are fighting it out in Europe, and the ultranationalists are tearing apart Asia looking for the last loyalist holdouts—that includes us. The Yanks are rebuilding destroyed cities while fighting off riots and increased crime rates caused by the flood of refugees from the East Coast while Canada is fighting their own flood of refugees trying to head north and Mexico's economy is declining from a mass of immigrants returning to their own country. South America and Africa are rooted in endless weapons trading and get rich quick thugs taking advantage of the universal turmoil while other various countries are suffering from financial difficulties as a result of funding the war effort.

This is what makes a war a world war. For sure, not everyone is fighting. Not everyone is dying. Not everyone is involved with the conflict. Not everyone is involved with its cause. But everyone is suffering from this war. Sure, it's no Holocaust; people aren't dying in death camps by the millions—yet. Even if the major powers made peace now, it's too late to undo the damage done by this war. It will take years for governments to recover. Some citizens never will.

All of this I can see from the small TV mounted on the wall in the lounge. Every time I lift my head up from another pushup, it seems like something else is showing on the news, some new disaster, some new casualty. You can't find anything else on television, not here, anyway. It's all about the war. During times of peace, the news would be reporting on the red moon shining through the window, but this is a time of war, and all the news reports on is blood and death.

The last time I watched a lunar eclipse was when I was a child. At some point, I stopped taking the time to notice. I got older. I was busy with school. I was busy with friends. Every now and again I would steal looks at lunar eclipses in the sky but never really take them into consideration. I got older. I started taking school more seriously. I stopped maintaining the bonds I had with my friends. I'd hear reports of lunar eclipses on the news. Occasionally I'd see images or live footage. I got older. School was over. I enlisted. When people started fighting and friends started dying, trivial things like lunar eclipses just weren't important anymore.

It's a partial eclipse tonight, what astrologists would call a penumbral eclipse. You have to wonder why, out of all the colors in this world, the moon would shine red. There's the scientific explanation, of course. The partial waves of light reflecting off of the moon and passing through the earth's atmosphere are refracted by it. The farther away the refracted light, the more pigment the light loses. If the moon were farther away—much farther—the light would appear blue. But the color of the moon poking through the clouds and shining through the window right now is red, and all I can think about is blood. If you took all of the blood that's ever been spilt in the name of war, I bet it would be more than enough to cover the surface of that cosmic body.

After nearly a month, I feel almost naked without all of the medical apparatus surrounding me. No more heart monitor, no more IV, no more feeding tube, no more bandages—only sutures in my skin that are on their way to being ready for removal. The feeding tube was almost the hardest part to lose. There's no easy way to go back to eating after that. It almost felt like I didn't know how anymore. I'm eating again now—not as much as I used to, not yet anyway—but I've lost weight, muscle. I spend as much time as I can doing workouts, trying to get my body back up to speed, but I'm starting to wonder if that's possible after going what I went through. Near death experiences can change you in more ways than one, I guess.

When I'm not working on getting back up to snuff, I'm writing in my journal. Stupid little relic. Still, I can't imagine what I'd do without it. It was Gaz's suggestion. I don't know what he went through before I became an FNG in the SAS, but he said it helped him keep his head clear, helped him ward off psychosis, so I took his advice and started writing everything down. Tactics, thoughts, maps, statistics, goals—I wrote whatever came to mind. Even did some sketches—when I joined the SAS, I never thought I'd miss drawing so much.

There are blood stains on the pages from when I was on the brink, and on the page next to a large bloody handprint are the words I've been pondering over for days now: _Saved again. How many times now, I've lost count. Don't mean I've lost track. The questions are hard. How do I repay his debt? How many times can a man save your life until it's no longer your own? But the answer's easy. At least to me. LOYALTY doesn't operate on a sliding scale. It's a safety. ON OR OFF._

When I gave Price's M1911 back to him, it felt good. It _wasn't just the gun that killed Imran Zakhaev—it was the gun that saved my life_. It seems like so long ago that I wrote those words down in the journal. _Felt good to give the gun back_. It feels shitty now. It feels like by handing the gun over to him I was just setting him up to save my ass again. I should have kept it, should have used it to save his ass for once. Yeah, right. Old man can take care of himself.

I've been working on the picture on the last filled page in the journal for days now. It's been hard to work on and so far impossible to finish. All of the members of the team in perfect likeness—well, not perfect. It gets harder to see their faces with each passing day, and even when I do remember them it's hard to put them to the page. Elaine and Ghost are the worst—both of their faces are permanently ingrained in my skull, but my pen always stops when I get to them. My mind always freezes, and, the more and more I try, the more I feel like I need to kill Makarov first.

I have dreams now. I've had dreams almost every other night for the past few weeks. They're mostly flashes of the past, memories of faces that flood my mind. I can't say it's been easy. When I rejoined the world of the living, I didn't realize I'd do it that way. And now I'm looking out the window at the eclipse and, even though the red is kind of unnerving, I'm seeing beauty in it for the first time. Here we are down here fighting, and the world just goes on and on.

The sound of helicopter blades pulls me away from the moonlight that's slowly returning to its normal color. My body pulls me toward the door before my mind starts thinking about it. I meet Price in the hallway, and Nikolai is right behind him. "We expecting someone?" I ask as I walk beside them down the hallway.

"An old friend," Nikolai responds. We turn a corner and start scaling stairs to the roof.

"Friend, eh?" Price says. "I guess you could call it that."

"I know, he's an idiot, and he has no backbone," Nikolai says, "but we need all the help we can get."

"'All the help we can get,'" I echo. "What's this about?"

Price stops partway up the stairs and looks down at me. "You sure you're ready for this, son?" he asks. "Like it or not, you're still recovering."

"Don't coddle me, old man," I say to him with a smirk. "I'm eager to get back in the action."

Price only smiles and continues up the stairs with Nikolai hot on his tail. I keep going up the stairs behind them. By the time we hit the roof, my breathing is heavy and labored, but I made it all the way to the top. Believe it or not, a week ago I couldn't even make it one flight. It looks like my constant training is paying off.

The moon is back to normal by the time we hit the outside. The helo blades slicing through the air cut into my eardrums with a comforting familiarity. I can almost taste the battlefield on my tongue. When you get pulled out of the game, you never think you'll miss it this much. Maybe not everyone does, but I've felt too listless and too idle for these past few weeks. The whole world is fighting, and I was just lying in a bed. Getting back into the action will feel just right.

The helo is already landed on the pad when we reach it. The engines die down when we approach and the spinning blades slow down to an indifferent speed. "I take it this 'old friend' is someone we can trust?" I ask.

Price looks over at Nikolai and gives him a slanted smile. "To a point," he says slowly and he looks back to the helo.

I know that the first man who steps out is our guy. I laugh under my breath and let a smile grace one corner of my mouth. "I should have known," I mutter to no one in particular.

"Comrade Kamarov," Nikolai says with a smile. He takes the arriving Russian's hand in a tight grip and moves to his side as he approaches us.

"It is good to see you, Nikolai," Kamarov says as the two of them stop in front of us. He looks to Price and me and nods his head at each of us. "Price. Soap." When he extends his hand, Price takes it first. Then he extends it to me and I take it. "It looks like you've lost weight," he says.

For a minute, I think he's talking to me. Then Price says, "We're a few members short of a squad if that's what you mean."

"It seems like every time I see you, you've lost another squad," Kamarov says.

Price and I both shoot each other looks, but before either of us can say anything, Nikolai says, "Idiot, remember?" Nikolai slaps Kamarov on the shoulder and leads the way back to the stairs. Price and I follow behind. "So, I take it you have something interesting for us."

"Nothing big," Kamarov says. "Just a few small jobs, and they might not be strictly legal."

"Jobs?" I ask as we start descending the stairs.

"If we want to take out Makarov, we need equipment," Price says.

"Don't tell me the loyalists are running out of supplies," I say.

Nikolai looks back at me and says, "Our base in India was our largest. When the ultranationalists hit it, they got most of our weapons caches and funds, not to mention all of the other small bases they've hit in Asia."

"The only things we can afford right now," Kamarov chimes in, "are old, run down, _cheap_ weapons and equipment. The ultranationalists will tear us apart."

"So we need to make some cash," I say. "I get the picture."

"Kamarov," Price says, "tell us more about these jobs."

"Let me guess," I say. "Illegal shipments."

"The world _is_ at war," Kamarov says. "I don't know the specifics on what the shipments are, but—"

"My money's on weapons or drugs," I say.

"Da," Nikolai agrees. "War is the easy time to get away with smuggling."

"_An_ easy time," I correct him.

"Are we on offense or defense?" Price asks as we hit the bottom of the stairs. We head back down the hall and past the lounge on the first floor.

The kitchen is our base of operations. Every single kitchen appliance, dish, utensil, or anything else that normally belongs in a kitchen is shoved up onto the counters or into the corner. The foldout table in the center of the room is covered in papers—files, accounts, maps, newspapers. I don't know what's what anymore. I only know that the stain on the edge of the table that looks like ketchup is actually blood from one of the times when I ripped my sutures open. Leave it to _me…_

Kamarov stops at the table and leans on it with his arms extended. The flimsy thing bends under his weight, and I think twice before leaning my own weight on it. Instead, I lean back against the wall, tired from ascending and descending the stairs and grateful for something to rest against. Price and Nikolai settle themselves between Kamarov and me.

"I knew you wouldn't go for it if I told you we were going to help traffic illegal items," Kamarov says. "All you have to do is scout out their trade routes."

"Scouting?" Price asks and his 'stache bunches up against his nose. "For who?"

"For interested parties who want the items for themselves," Kamarov says. "Local mercs, no one who is involved in the war."

Price snorts and says, "Mercs are just turncoats waiting to happen."

"Price is right," I say. "For the right price, they'll help anyone. What if they end up sidin' with Makarov?"

"If he hasn't hired them already, what makes you think he will now?" Kamarov says.

"Why isn't that comforting?" Nikolai mutters. "But he has a point. Mercs are just as risky for Makarov to work with as they are for us."

"These guys are small time anyway," Kamarov chimes in. "You know how many small merc groups are squatting here in Africa."

"It doesn't really matter," says Price as he steps forward. "We need the money; we don't have much of a choice. Kamarov, what's our objective?"

"The clients want to meet with us in Guinea," Kamarov says. "They'll give us the details then."

"I knew there was a reason I hated freelance jobs," Price mumbles.

"We could just take whatever we're tracking for ourselves," I mutter.

"Small time, remember?" Kamarov says. "We have connections to buy weapons they can't. The money will be more useful to us."

"I'm guessing there's a reason why you didn't bring Yuri back with you," Price says.

"Like I said," Kamarov explains, "they're small time. Still, we should be ready in case they decide to break our deal. Yuri is setting up near the meeting point. If they try anything, we'll be ready for them."

Price laughs. He slaps Kamarov on the shoulder and says, "You've always been a manipulative bastard, Kamarov. Never thought it'd work in our favor."

"Tomorrow, then?" I ask.

"That's right," Price says, that authoritative voice taking over his tone. He starts pacing around the room and says, "Tomorrow we start picking up the pieces." He looks at me with hard eyes and gives me a slight nod. "Gentlemen, you know what to do."


	7. Soldier

"_We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves." -Blaise Pascal_

* * *

><p><strong>[September 17<strong>**th**** – 03:08:13]**

**[Elaine "Flash" Henderson]**

**[somewhere in Russia]**

Everyone has something—something that makes them think, _Oh, that will never happen to me._

When you're a kid practicing fire drills in school, when your parents go over tornado procedures at the house, when you take that first flight and all of the ones after it and think every single time how ridiculous and unnecessary it is for the flight attendant to go over safety protocol—we all think somewhere in the back of our minds that well never be in a fire at school. We'll never have to worry about a tornado hitting our house. We'll never be on a plane when it crashes.

And most of us never are. We go through most of our lives without any unusual disasters. How often do we look back and think about the ones that happen to others? How often do we consider what others who have experienced it are going through? For me, the answer is almost never. It's impossible to know, too difficult to imagine. There are too many variables. Anything can happen to anybody.

My hair is sticking in a different direction where it was smashed against the stone floor and dampened by the blood on the back of my head. Blood is running from my nose from when one of the guards gave me a solid right hook to the face. My shirt is sticking to my skin where my body drenched it in sweat. My pants are sagging down in the front where the button and zipper were broken apart. But the only things that really matter are the two men lying on the ground in pools of their own blood and the gun, still warm, gripped firmly in my hand.

The first thing I thought when the two guards moved from the door to approach me was that I was going to get hit, beat up, tortured. I was thinking like a soldier. In captivity, a soldier thinks they'll be interrogated, tortured, and killed. They might even consider escape from time to time. That's where my mind was at. Maybe Makarov is going to put me to work, but I'm still a captive. I had every reason to expect they would treat me that way.

It wasn't until after the guards backhanded me across the cheek and pinned me to the ground that I started thinking like a woman. They hit me, knocked me down, and ripped open the front of my pants. It was then when I realized what was going to happen.

I fought back. I hit the first spot a _woman_ would hit, one firm kick to the groin with one of a pair of combat boots. First, the guard reacted like a _man_ would. He keeled over for a fraction of a second, long enough for me to slip out from under his legs. _Then_ he reacted like a _soldier_ and engaged me like he considered me a real threat.

He punched me in the face as soon as I got to my feet, and I could taste blood in the back of my throat almost instantly. I jabbed him in the throat, gave him a hit to the back of the knee, and moved around him to go for a choke hold.

But I still wasn't thinking like a _soldier_, and I forgot about the second man.

He tackled me back to the ground, and a sickening crack echoed in my ears when my head smacked the stone. I saw white, and when my vision went back to normal I could feel pain in the back of my head and stickiness on my scalp. The first guard was towering above me and gave a menacing kick to my ribs. He stepped on one of my hands in anger and I let out a yelp of pain.

On top of me, the second guard started to undo the button of his pants, and my mind finally started working again. The soldier in me reached for his waist with my free hand and grabbed the GSh-18 at his belt. The soldier in me pressed the gun to his abdomen and fired. The soldier in me pointed the gun to the first guard, aimed for his head, and pulled the trigger. The soldier in me got to my feet despite my spinning head. The soldier in me let loose two more bullets to make sure the job was done.

And the woman in me is still shaking, even now. The warm metal grasped between my fingers is the only part of me that's static.

Alexi just laughs as he stares down at the bodies, which pretty much means that Makarov, wherever he is, is laughing. After all, Alexi is just his mouthpiece. "Khorosho," he says. It means "good," but knowing what it means doesn't really help me understand.

My voice quivers a little when I start speaking. "Two of your guards are lying dead on the ground, and 'good' is all you have to say?" I ask.

"What's one loss for several gains?" Alexi says. I don't bother pointing out that there are two losses lying on the ground. Alexi keeps speaking as if he couldn't care less that I'm there. "We know now that's you're capable as a soldier. We also know that you probably could have escaped this room at any time, but you haven't."

"You're saying you trust me?"

"Trust?" he asks, and then he sneers. "Trust is a strong word," he says. "At the very least, we know we don't have to worry about you trying anything, not just yet anyway."

I keep my eyes glued to the man and don't let go of the gun in my hand. My nose crinkles when he looks back at me—the blood is starting to smell. The smile stays on Alexi's face, and the woman in me feels like he's looking at me like a piece of meat. The soldier in me sees the gears turning in his head.

"Perhaps it's not a moment too soon," Alexi says, and it sounds more like he's reading words from a script. "Makarov needs your abilities."

"For what, exactly?" I say as I cock an eyebrow at him. Somewhere in the back of my mind I see Archer and wonder if I'll be working with him at all. The questions don't stop there. I'm flooded with others all at once: where is he? How is he doing? Is he still alive? Is he still okay? But these have been lingering in the back of my mind for days, and they're easy to shove out.

"Don't ask questions," Alexi says, and the smile disappears from his face. "We'll tell you only the things you need to know. The rest isn't your business. Ponimatʹ?" Understand?

Something in me snaps right then. I don't know if it's because I've been locked in this room for so long or if it's because I have the gun in my hand. It could also be because I was almost raped or maybe it's the way I hear Makarov's voice whenever Alexi opens his mouth. Hell, maybe it's just the way Alexi looks too _Russian_, whatever that is, but something snaps in me, and I feel like doing more to Alexi than just pointing the gun at him and pulling the trigger.

I move across the room in two steps and stick the gun in his face before slamming him up against the wall. The sound of his head smacking the stone sends a chill of ecstasy down my spine, and it acts like the trigger that brings my arm up against his throat and presses down. The wide look in his eyes, the way I can see his sclera all the way around his irises makes me want to laugh, but when I open my mouth, words come out instead.

"I'm sick of this shit," I say to Alexi, only I'm not really talking to him. I'm talking to the earpiece he's wearing; I'm talking to Makarov—assuming he's actually listening. "You want me to do work for you? You've got it. Frankly, I don't give a fuck if you trust me or not, but if you need my 'abilities,' you'll give me the details on the job. I'm done being fucked around."

It takes a few minutes before I hear any sort of response from Alexi, but eventually he wheezes a few words out of his compressed throat. "Ladno, ladno. Otpustite menya," he says. Okay, okay, and something else that I don't have to know to understand his meaning.

I take my arm off of Alexi's throat and step away from him. His first few breaths are labored gasps that send more good chills up my spine. The gun in my hand is starting to feel more comfortable there, so I don't let go of it. Alexi eyeballs it for a few short seconds, but seems satisfied when he realizes I'm not going to lift the gun again—at least, not as long as he doesn't screw with me.

"Well?"

"The job," Alexi says through a few more rough breaths, "it's an escort."

"A VIP?" I ask.

"No," Alexi says, "no." His voice isn't so composed now. He's not reading from a script. In other words, Makarov isn't issuing orders to be relayed directly into Alexi's ear anymore. "A shipment," Alexi says. "There's a shipment that we need overseen for transport."

"All of the details, Alexi," I say as I tap the GSh-18 against my thigh. "Give me all of the details."

"It's a monetary shipment," Alexi says. "A payment. A payment that needs to be delivered to Nuremburg."

"Nuremburg," I echo. "From?"

"From Prague. The shipment is leaving from Prague," he says.

"When are we leaving?" I ask.

Alexi doesn't respond immediately—no doubt he's listening to Makarov in his ear. Eventually, he says, "Tri chasa spustya." Three hours.

"Gear me up." I wave my gun in his face a few times and say, "I'm keeping this." I walk to the door and turn around when he doesn't follow me. "Well," I say, "do you want me to do this or not?"

After Alexi apparently gets the confirmation he needs, he nods and leads the way out the door. The smell of pooling blood leaves my senses the moment we're away. My shakes are also completely gone. If anything, all I can feel is excitement, but whether that's just plain old jitters or excitement to get back onto the field I have no idea. It doesn't make it any easier to figure out which when I remind myself that I'm working for the enemy. Sure, I'm doing it for a "higher cause," but I'm still working for the enemy. Should I be excited about getting back on the field under these circumstances?

The room where Alexi leads me is stocked with every weapon you can imagine—well, every _Russian_ made weapon you can imagine. SMGs, rifles, handguns, explosives—the works. If I had a few more allies on my side, we could use this armory to bring the fortress to the ground. But I'm alone, and there's no way I'd be able to pull that off. Alexi knows it too. He doesn't bother training his gun on me. He doesn't bother bringing more guards to watch me. He just stands by the door and stares as I scan all of the arms in the room.

"You can find a uniform in that locker," Alexi says as he cocks his head.

The thought that I'd be wearing one of their uniforms didn't occur to me until that moment. I've been wearing the same clothes I pawned off that Shadow Company assassin so long ago—feels like ages. The original long-sleeved shirt was mostly burned, but the pants and the undershirt and the socks and boots are all the same. Even after a thorough wash, you can still see the faint bloodstain from my wound on the black shirt if you look closely enough.

I flip open the locker on the wall without a word to Alexi. There are several uniforms inside; I pick out the smallest one. Alexi doesn't move from the door. He stares at me from his place against the frame, but his face doesn't change when I kick off my boots and start to change my clothes. I don't turn to face him when I'm done—I'd rather not find out if he's looking at me like a piece of meat again.

The uniform, clean though it may be, feels all wrong. It's not that it's uncomfortable or too big or too small. It just feels like it doesn't belong there. It feels like, by putting it on, I'm betraying everything I stand for. I've never felt any particular love for clothing, but, for the first time ever, I miss that uniform I used to wear everyday with the one-four-one's logo on it. When I think about the last day I had one on, I remember the gulag. Phantom pains shoot through my healing wound, and I feel nauseous.

"Well?" Alexi mutters from the doorway. "Pick your gear. I don't have all day."

I do as he says and start picking out my arsenal, Alexi watching all the while. I keep the handgun I nabbed from the guard—it feels like the only familiar thing I have, even though it wasn't originally mine. But it was the gun that saved me less than a few hours ago, which means I know I can rely on it. Aside from Archer, who is miles away for all I know, this gun is the only friend I have, the only one I know I can count on to get me out of a fix.

"Who will I be working with?" I ask Alexi as I finish gearing myself up. What I really want to ask is if I'll be working with Archer, but the words are too risky. Even the thought puts me in danger of voicing my feelings, so I log the question away.

Alexi sees right through it. "Wondering if you'll be working with your comrade?" he asks me with a sneer. I keep on my poker face—it's become easier to maintain in the past few weeks. Alexi takes his weight off the door frame and steps toward me. When he approaches, our gazes lock.

"If you want me to do my job right," I say to him, "you'll give me someone I can use, not the typical pantywaists you have working under you."

"You won't have to worry about that," Alexi says. His breath in my face is rank.

I snort—just as much to get the smell out of my nose as for the effect. "Oh yeah? You actually think you have someone who measures up?" Alexi only keeps smiling. "Who will I be working with?" I ask, emphasizing each word.

Alexi turns toward the locker with the uniforms and pulls something out. When he turns back around, he tosses me a radio and says, "You'll be working with me."


	8. An Enemy for Each of Us

"_Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them." –Benjamin Franklin_

* * *

><p><strong>[September 17<strong>**th**** – 19:28:01]**

**[John Price]**

**[somewhere over Mali]**

I mark the O on the page without looking down at the half-filled grid. A few seconds pass of silent contemplation and the constant buzz of the heli blades spinning above our heads. "You win again, old man," Soap says with a scoff. Yuri stares at the black book in Soap's hand like he's studying the game with war strategy precision. "Another," Soap says.

"You should give up, Soap," Yuri says. "Price hasn't lost a game against you yet. He plays like a tactician."

I scoff. Not that it isn't true, of course. Tic-tac-toe is every bit as involved as war. It's just on a simple three by three grid, made simpler by the fact that it doesn't involve politics. Politics is what makes war complicated, not battle. Without politics, war is relatively uncomplicated; if they try to kill you, you kill them first. That's rule number one.

Soap hands me the journal with the three by three grid drawn on it. I take the pen from him and say, "You sure you wanna do this, Soap?"

"Another," Soap repeats as he inclines his head toward the journal.

Basic strategy: gather and establish your forces. Organization is key. There's a reason barbarians in the old days were eventually weeded out by the methodical armies of organized empires. Presence has to be solid, unbreakable, the same way we chose our squad and made our plans before we met our temporary employers when we came to Guinea. I put an X in the top right corner of the grid. The enemy will do the same. Soap puts an O in the bottom left corner and hands the journal back to me.

Basic strategy: meet the enemy force head on. Show them you can defend yourself, no matter the size of your military force, while simultaneously giving the impression that you believe you can win the battle through sheer force alone. We went to the meeting, and the fools thought Soap and I were the only two coming—they thought they had the upper hand right from the beginning, but that was our plan all along. I place my X in the middle. The enemy will first establish a line of defense to ensure your frontal assault in unsuccessful. Soap places his O in the left middle square.

Basic strategy: establish a small force behind enemy lines. From there, they can employ guerilla tactics—disrupt supply lines, spread subversion, eliminate major enemy threats. Yuri was our ace in the hole for this. He kept track of enemy movements, spied on enemy transmissions, and pilfered supplies from their own stores. On the tic-tac-toe grid, I place an X in the top left corner. Unaware, the enemy will attempt the same, dividing their forces in the long run. Soap puts an O in the bottom right corner.

Basic strategy: reunite your divided forces. Amassed as a single unit, your force can confront and obliterate the divided enemy army, still suffering from the loss of supply lines and the crippled enemy force. When it came time to bring the deal to a close, Yuri closed in on our unwitting employers. He'd interrupted transmissions, stolen account numbers, and planted bombs all over the enemy stores as insurance. For fear of losing their money, weapons, and key players in their hierarchy, they gave us the package, what they owed us, and then some. I put my X in the top center box.

"Game," I say to Soap.

Yuri cocks an eyebrow. "It is like he knows what moves you're going to make before you even make them," he says.

"Well," Soap says with a scoff, "almost everything I know I learned from him." He smiles. "Almost."

"I still have a few things I haven't taught you, Soap."

"Likewise."

"We are almost back," Nikolai says.

"Great," Yuri mutters. "I'm eager for a hot meal."

"You can say that again," Soap mutters with a laugh.

"Business first, meal later," I say.

Soap looks less than pleased to be getting off the chopper. Even as an FOB, the place makes him uncomfortable. Especially as an FOB. I guess it's hard to get used to operating out of a shack after working from a well-armed sub for so long. As for me, any place outside of the gulag feels like home, so long as I have my gun and my hat.

We gather around the table with our spoils. The bloodstain on the corner catches my eye. "First order of business," I say. "You didn't rip open your stitches again, right, Soap?"

"Very funny, old man," Soap says.

"How much do we have?"

"I'd say around five hundred dollars plus the explosives Yuri got from their supplies," Soap says. "It's more than we needed."

"Then all we need is to find a seller."

"I can handle that," Nikolai says. "Some of my contacts are still active, just well hidden. It will take some time to track them down."

"That's fine," I say. "Until Makarov shows his hand, we have nothing to do but wait anyhow."

"We will not have to just wait," Yuri says from the corner of the room. "A lot of weapons deals go down here in Africa."

Weapons deals—that's an understatement. It's a trading post based right in the middle of hell. With war all over the world, various parties are making bank just selling their wares back to whoever they bought them from. Revolution aside, everyone can agree that money is more appealing than power to the people. When the rest of the world caught on fire, conflict zones may as well have turned into bazaars. 'Come buy your weapons and mercenaries here.'

"You want to sign on for another deal," I say.

Yuri steps away from his corner and leans his hands on the table. "It doesn't hurt to have more than we need," Yuri says. "But it wouldn't hurt to keep an eye out for deals going to Makarov either."

"An entire continent supplying the war through back doors," I say, "and you think we'll actually find something?"

"It's not as if we have anything better to do," Soap says. "We're sitting around with our thumbs up our asses as it is. It's no skin off my back if we at least keep an ear open."

"Ears only," I say. "If we show our hand to Makarov first, we'll have no chance of finding him."

"Agreed," Soap says.

"And what if he never shows himself?" Yuri says. "We should be trying to find him before things go too far."

"No," Soap says. "We need to find that bastard, and if that means playing it safe until we do, then that's what we do."

"Yes," Yuri says, crossing his arms, "forget about all the lives that will be lost in the meantime."

Soap pushes around me, and I take a few steps back to make way for him. In three strides, he's in Yuri's face with his hand grasping his shirt. "We tried actively looking for Makarov before, and it only got my squad killed," Soap says. "Makarov can't know we're coming for him. Period. We let him make the first move."

"Understood," Yuri says, and Soap backs off.

"I'm as eager to find the bastard as you, Yuri," I say, "but Soap's right. Makarov was always one step ahead of us. We need to change that." Yuri nods and returns to his corner. "Alright. Nikolai, raise your contacts. Get us those supplies. I'll send word to Kamarov to keep an eye out for more jobs and any patterns that might point to Makarov. In the meantime, we're on standby."

Everyone meets my words with a set of grumbles before they head out of the room. I keep my spot by the table. Soap doesn't leave—no surprise there. Boy's always on edge when there's something on his mind.

"Weapons and supplies aren't going to cut it," Soap says.

"I know."

"We need information too."

"For now, Kamarov is our eye in the sky," I say. "There's not much more we can do."

"We need information that Shepherd already had."

"I'm starting to wonder if you know what being disavowed really means."

Soap laughs. "That's all politics," he says. "It's easier to bend the rules during a war. If they needed us badly enough, they'd take us back in a heartbeat."

"You're probably right about that."

"Shepherd knew more than he told us. Why else would Makarov have wanted him dead?"

I pull a cigar out of my pocket and start chewing on it. "You don't think I haven't thought about that?" I ask. "My hands are tied. There's no one left on the inside to get us the information we need."

"What about Sandman?"

Sandman. There's a name I haven't heard in a long time, not since I was yelling at him and Ghost to get Soap out during Kingfish. I take my chewed cigar out of my mouth and toss it into the trashcan sitting in the corner of the room. "I guess you have more tricks up your sleeve than I thought. It won't be easy getting a hold on him."

"Still, it's an option. If we can get a message to him, maybe we can get our hands on some information that will lead us to Makarov."

"Then we should work on trying to track him down."

"What about MacMillan?"

"MacMillan?" I ask. "I'm surprised you'd even think of him."

Soap laughs. "It's not _that_ surprising, is it? You and him played a pretty big role with Zakhaev. You've mentioned him on several other occasions too. We _need_ people on the inside for this, Price, and you know it."

"I know."

"Do you know how to get in contact with him?"

I scoff. "He's at the top of the bloody pyramid."

"Then you know how to reach him?"

"He's a last resort," I say.

"Last resort? What if he has information we can use?"

"Part of having an ace in the hole is making sure it stays in the hole. If we contact him needlessly, it might compromise his position."

"He's that high up?"

I snort. "I told you he's at the top of the bloody pyramid."

"I guess we need to keep that hole plugged up, then."

"Right," I say. "If it's an emergency, I'll contact him. In the meantime, we need to be ready for anything."

"Roger that," Soap says, and he steps to the door. "I'll see if I can't find a way to contact Sandman," he says, and then he's gone.

* * *

><p><strong>[September 17<strong>**th**** – 19:46:38]**

**[Elaine "Flash" Henderson]**

**[Prague]**

"We need to be ready for anything," Alexi says to me. We've been waiting at a helipad on the rooftop of a building deep in the city for our transport, and Alexi has hated having to be on this op with me every step of the way.

"I _have_ done this kind of this before, _mudak_," I say to him. I'm not sure of the exact English equivalent, but I've heard it spoken by others around me enough to know that it's an insult.

"Naglaya suka," Alexi hisses. Despite the smirk on his face, I can tell that I'm getting under his skin. "Odnazhdy ya sobirayusʹ ubitʹ tebya," he says, and then he takes a deep breath and adds, "I wonder if you treated your commander with such disrespect."

I don't fall for the trap he's laid out. I lie; it's not hard anymore. Lies come to my lips easily now, sometimes unintentionally, especially lies about my past, personal things that Alexi and Makarov couldn't possibly already know. I don't even know which things I need to hide. Safer to hide it all—I decided that weeks ago.

"My commanding officer thought I was pretentious," I tell him. "I think the only reason he ever let me out on the field was so I would shut the hell up." Commanding officer. Always 'commanding officer.' I never say his name anymore, not because I'm afraid it will give my loyalty away but because I'm afraid I won't be able to keep it together if I do. So it's 'commanding officer.' Always 'commanding officer.'

"I wish you would shut the hell up now," Alexi says. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

"You're the one who wanted my help," I say. "If you didn't need it, you could have just killed me."

"What makes you think I won't?"

I smile.

"You think because of our little encounter that I'm afraid of you?"

I jump at the chance to say the first true statement I've said in what feels like forever. "Makarov is the one who gives the orders," I say, "and I know that you're afraid of him. You won't kill me. Not as long as Makarov has plans to keep me alive."

Alexi scoffs and shifts his weight again. He looks down at his watch and says, "The shipment will be arriving in a few minutes."

"Really? I thought we were standing up here for the view."

He shifts his weight yet again—his way of showing that I'm pissing him off. "If you run your mouth like that when we get to Nuremburg, don't be surprised if you end up dead anyway. Our business partner has a short temper and a crude sense of humor."

"We have to get the shipment to Nuremburg first," I say. "You may not have given me any details about this operation, but I'm smart enough to know that you wouldn't have needed me if you didn't expect trouble."

"Just a precaution," Alexi says.

"I'm sure."

"There's the helicopter," he says at the same moment I hear the machine. Alexi lifts his radio from his vest and says, "Skazhite Sokolov dovesti otgruzku." We step back as the helicopter lands, and a few seconds later two men come to the roof from the top floor carrying a crate.

"That must be a lot of money," I say with a whistle.

"And it had better all make it to Nuremburg," Alexi shouts.

"You think I'm going to steal some?" I laugh. "Don't worry about me."

"It's isn't you I'm worried about," Alexi says before he steps into the chopper.

The two men with the crate slide it into the helo right after Alexi. I step in after them and help Alexi secure the cargo to the floor of the chopper. There's a .50 cal on the opposite door of. When Alexi catches me looking at it, he shouts, "Another precaution."

"That's heavy firepower for a precaution," I say to him once we both have our aviation headsets on. "The war hasn't even hit Prague yet. What are you so worried about?"

"Afraid?"

"Cautious."

"There are pockets of resistance hiding all over the place," Alexi says. "We should be fine once we get out of Prague, but we might run into trouble before then."

"You're just telling me this now?"

We finish securing the shipment and Alexi and I take seats on opposite side of each other. "Vzlet," Alexi says into the headset. Seconds later the chopper lifts off the ground. "As long as you do your job, everything should be fine."

"It's a bit hard for me to do my job when you aren't forthcoming about the details," I mutter. I have to stop myself from chewing on my cheeks.

"So, you love the job," Alexi says.

"What?"

Alexi just smiles at me, and I know I've fallen into a trap somehow.

"I love finishing the job," I say quickly. "And the more I know about the job, the better chance I have of finishing it."

Alexi doesn't look convinced. He keeps the smile plastered on his face—the Makarov smile, I call it. It's the smile I always picture when I think of Makarov speaking into Alexi's little ear. It's become something all of Alexi's own since we met, though. Makarov isn't speaking into Alexi's ear, not now. I may piss him off, but deep down I think Alexi loves it. No, he loves the game. He loves the game of revealing the truth in people. I want to say I hate it, but, the truth is, I've been playing the game right along with him, and I feel the satisfaction of it every time I get him to shift his weight from one foot to the other. I just hate being on the losing side.

"Keep your eyes peeled for movement on the rooftops. You never know when someone might try to shoot us down," Alexi says.

It's another part of the game, I know. He sticks me on the .50 and I have to shoot down members of the resistance. He knows I'll do it, I have no doubts about that, but he's hoping some part of me will show hesitance, that I'll show some hint of the true allegiance he's been trying to pry out of me since we met. That's fine. I've made my heart cold. I won't give him want he wants.

"Ya videl dvizhenie," the pilot says through the radios.

"Movement," Alexi paraphrases. "Where?"

I answer for him. "To the south. See that grey building?" Alexi grabs a handle by the door and leans over my shoulder to look out at the city. He grabs a pair of binoculars from his belt and peers through them. "Are they armed," I ask.

"They're armed. And they're definitely up to something," Alexi says.

"Orders?"

"Don't shoot unless they do."

"Lieutenant Mikhailov," the pilot says through a thick accent. "More movement to southwest."

I angle the .50 cal to point toward the area the pilot is talking about. Alexi follows the path with his binoculars and hums. "That's two groups," he says.

"It looks like they're lining up."

The Makarov smile flashes across Alexi's face. "Like ants," he says. "They're setting up turrets."

"I knew you knew this would happen," I say.

Alexi taps me on the shoulder and says, "Take care of them."

"I believe your orders were that I shouldn't shoot unless they do," I say.

"If we get shot out of the sky and have to walk this shipment all the way to Nuremburg, you're carrying it," he says.

Our eyes lock for a few seconds as he stares me down trying to seek out any bit of hesitance he can. I look away before too long. "You're the boss," I mutter.

I look down my sights and flex my trigger finger. It's always been easy, flexing that finger. It's what comes after that's hard. It's watching men dead in pools of their own blood that kills me, but even though I can't see the red mist from this high up, my heart sinks into my stomach when the bodies start falling. It's true that you never really get used to killing. In the moment, sure. It's not hard to say that it's us or them. Not unless you're the kid with the magnifying glass over the anthill.

The resistance soldiers scatter like insects, and Alexi laughs. I try to ignore it. "Targets down," I say.

"Markovic," Alexi says, "do you see any more?"

"Negative," the pilot says. "Chert! RPG! RPG right!"

The chopper rocks to the side before Alexi or I have a chance to grab onto anything. I tip forward and slam my midsection against the .50 cal. A breath of air escapes my lungs and leaves my vision black for an infinitesimal second. When color returns to me, I spot Alexi's hand beside me with a death grip on the handle of the .50. I look down just in time to see his foot slip through the doorway of the chopper. His knee slams against the ground and sends a vibration through his limbs that loosens his grip on the handle.

I reach out without thinking. One of my knees hits the floor while I brace my other foot on the .50 cal. My elbow slams against the ground when I shoot my hand forward. Our hands lock around each other's wrists, and, for what must feel like the longest second in Alexi's life, he's dangling out the doorway as the chopper rocks back and forth. The pilot shouts in my ear as he tries to stabilize the chopper, and his beeping instruments echo in the background. But everything between Alexi and me is silent.

Our eyes meet with a common thought. Alexi's eyes flit nervously between my face and our locked grip. I feel his clutch tighten around my wrist, and I feel my glove get cold from sweat collecting on his wrist. If looks could kill, Alexi could kill me now with his snarling nose and his protruding jaw, with his bloodshot eyes and vein bulging from his neck. Then we'd both go plummeting down and whoever is waiting for us in Nuremburg probably wouldn't ever get their shipment.

But no one falls to their death. The chopper stabilizes. The beeping instruments in the background stop. The city below us stops shaking. Once I get control of my footing, I put all my weight into pulling Alexi up. The minute his torso is back inside the helo, he grips the handle of the .50 cal with his free hand and hauls himself forward with a groan.

Alexi doesn't take time to catch a breath. He goes for a weapon, leans out the other side of the chopper, and fires. "Target down," he says. "Markovic?"

"Nichego," the pilot says, out of breath.

"Poluchitʹ nas ot·syuda," Alexi shouts.

He stays by the door with a hand on a handgrip, but looks back at me. We stare at each other for a moment until we catch our breath. Alexi sniffs once his breathing slows down and then swallows. Then he shouts, "We aren't clear until we're out of the city. Do your job."

I don't make the conscious decision to listen to him before my body turns to look out the chopper. I get back on both feet and slip my hands back on the .50 cal. The passing rooftops are empty as I scan them, but I don't take my eyes off of them, not until the buildings of Prague start thinning out near the outer rim and we clear anything that's in range. Once the scenery is passing smoothly below us, I tear my eyes from the landscape and glance back at Alexi, who's staring out the door of the helo and smoking a cigarette.

He doesn't look back at me. His weight shifts from one foot to the other.


	9. We're Even Now

"_The wise learn many things from their enemies." –Aristophanes_

**[September 18****th**** – 00:36:12]**

**[Elaine "Flash" Henderson]**

**[Nuremburg, Germany]**

Several men meet us on the rooftop when we land in Nuremburg, and Alexi orders the grunts to carry the package on our way down from the helipad. The night is quiet, so quiet I'd almost swear there is no war going on at all. People here are asleep, cozy in their beds. Or maybe they're locked inside their houses quivering in fear of what's to come. It feels empty. And sobering.

Alexi doesn't have to say a word to any of the soldiers here to get them to do his bidding, as if they've seen him here countless times before. They're uniforms are different, though, if you can even call them uniforms. Hired guns, most likely; people that are only loyal to their next paychecks. So long as the cash keeps flowing, they can be trusted more than almost anyone else. As long as you're the highest bidder, they'll do anything you tell them to.

Meaning it probably isn't Alexi that they're deferring to. It's someone else, someone higher up. Makarov? It's always a possibility, but if his hands were that deep in the pockets of his suppliers, he wouldn't need to pay them at all. No, more likely the mercenaries follow the orders of someone else, probably the man we're delivering the package to.

I remember Alexi's words unbidden and press my lips together. Offending this mystery man is not the wisest course of action, even if it's just to keep up the act with Alexi. Whoever he is, he has power. Power enough that even Makarov has to pull out the stops to get him to cooperate, and whomever's boots Makarov needs to lick, anyone else needs to go even lower.

The building is an extravagant one. Expensive paintings and furniture adorn the hallways—a painting every five feet, an end table under each one, and pricy pottery or fanciful flowers on each surface. Money is the one thing men like this have, and it's the one thing they still want. I can only imagine how much of this stuff Makarov paid for himself. But what is it that Makarov is buying? What is it that this mystery man is selling?

The grunts set the package down in some sort of antechamber. Alexi stops there, and I stop next to him. The grunts continue through the opposite door, closing it behind them. When the door clacks shut, Alexi gives me one glance and shifts his weight before he starts pacing around the room and looking at the paintings on the wall—paintings I'm somehow sure he's seen before. The room smells of a mixture of incense and cigars. The sweet scent almost makes my eyes water.

I mirror Alexi's movements around the room and start looking at the paintings myself. All of the images in this room are portraits of old men—predecessors maybe? They're all over fifty and straight-faced. Isn't that how these portraits usually are? The plaques below them don't yield any useful information, just names that I've never heard before and dates that mean next to nothing to me and a symbol that represents something I don't know about.

It isn't long before the grunts come back into the antechamber escorting an older man over fifty holding a cigar and looking especially fat and happy, at least in comparison to the rest of the faces in the room. A stench thick with endless cigar smoke follows him into the room and an intense nostalgia comes over me. For a moment, I half-expect them to be standing next to me, Ghost and…

"Alexi," the man says. "What did you bring me?" His accent is unmistakably German, but, like Alexi, his English is still clear and understandable. Ironic that the Russian ultranationalists would consort with the German using the language of their mutual enemies.

"Makarov is offering you the promised amount… along with a gift and his personal regards," Alexi says.

The man steps over to the crate and opens it up. Whatever he sees inside, he looks pleased. A smile creeps across his face and he sticks his cigar between his lips so he can run his fingers across his prize. "This will do. This will do nicely," he says.

"What about your end of the bargain, Volk," Alexi asks.

"Yes, yes," the man says. "The package will be there at the time we discussed. You're going to need an army to defend it, you know."

"Sierra Leone is full of soldiers that will defend that spot to the death," Alexi says.

"You'd better hope they're willing to do more than that," the man says. "My trade was getting hit hard by that American unit before the war began."

I have to stop myself from sucking in a breath, especially with Alexi watching me from the corner of his eye. The names Jengo Kwame and Alejandro Rojas immediately spring to mind. I can picture Kwame's corpse on the floor of the interrogation room in his weapon's factory. I can remember digging my fingers into the bullet wound of Rojas' right-hand man to get him to talk. I can hear Rojas' protests as he's interrogated nearby.

I can remember all of it. The missions before it, the missions after. Most importantly, though, Rio comes to mind. Not just our first mission with Roach, but the ship, the cargo, the explosives…

…and the symbol on them.

I glance to a painting on the wall and survey the symbol on the plaque below the portrait. It's a condor or maybe an eagle with two pointy legs below it or possibly some sort of pronged tail. The neck of the bird is separated from the body in a triangular fashion, and the wing span is significantly longer than the height of the creature. The same symbol is on every plaque, and, looking at the portraits more closely, all of the men look similar to the man standing before us. Brothers, uncles, grandfathers, and maybe a father somewhere—whatever this is and wherever this man's wealth comes from, it was passed on to him by predecessors.

Volk. It's not a name I'll be forgetting anytime soon. I log it away in the back of my mind and memorize the symbol on the plaques just in case I ever need to know it. When I look back at the man named Volk, he's staring at me. He points at me with the tip of his cigar—one that I have yet to see him actually puff—and says, "Who is he?"

Alexi glances at me and coughs out a laugh before I have a chance to argue, and then I decide better of it. If Volk can't tell that I'm a woman, who am I to correct him? With the burns on my face, my short hair, and the bulk of my uniform, it's not like he can tell. Better that he doesn't know, that none of these people know.

Alexi apparently decides the same thing. "He's new. He doesn't speak English," he says.

No doubt he's creating a situation where I don't have to speak in order to keep himself out of trouble. Of course, it works for me, too. Whether Alexi realizes it or not, it gives me the ability to listen to and understand every word Volk says without him even knowing it. If the man is smart, he'll still be wary. In any case, it's the first lie I've gone along with that's worked in my favor since joining Alexi.

Before I realize it, Alexi's hand is on my shoulder, and he says to Volk, "He's a hell of a shot, though."

Volk analyzes me for a moment and works his jaw before looking back to Alexi. He sniffs and then his eyes fall back down to the crate in the center of the room. A smile graces his face again as he twiddles his cigar between his fingers. Built-up ash falls to a growing pile on the floor. "You have the promise you came for, and I have what I want. Is there anything else I can do for Makarov?" Volk says.

"No," Alexi says. The Makarov smile cuts across his face before he says, "Makarov trusts the package will be at the designated coordinates at the designated time. He wishes you well and assures you that if the package is _not_ there, there will be consequences."

The smile drops from Volk's face, his cheeks hanging like a dog's jowls. "The package will be there," he says. He waves a hand at us and says, "I trust you can show yourselves out."

Alexi, smile still on his face, nods at Volk and says, "Always a pleasure." He grips his radio and says, "Markovic, budʹte gotovy uĭti." He nods his head at me as he pivots on a heel and starts back the way we came. I turn to follow him and notice Volk watching us go the whole way.

Alexi shows us all the way back to the roof—it's a walk he's probably made several times. Volk's grunts keep their eyes on us throughout the walk but otherwise don't bother us. Many of their stares linger when they catch sight of the scars on my face. Most of the ones whose eyes I meet look away quickly. A few of them keep their eyes fixed on mine until I'm the one that has to look away. The men by the stairs to the roof stare so piercingly it almost feels like a challenge. I keep my eyes on them until we pass through the door to the roof and hear the chopper on the other side.

The minute the door shuts behind me, a blow hits me across the face and sends me halfway to the ground. Before I get a chance to stand back up and defend myself, another blow gets me in the abdomen and takes me down to both knees instead of one. I block the next blow coming at my face by chance, but I'm grabbed by the wrist and twisted around so that another blow lands across my temple. I'm dazed just long enough to be locked into a choke hold. Subdued, I have the mind to feel the blood gushing from my nose and taste some in my mouth.

I can almost hear Alexi's smile in my ear when he speaks. "You should have just let me fall," he says. He grabs the back of my head and sends me to the ground. My head smacks the pavement and dazes me again. I see a speckle of blood on the ground when I lift my head back up. I feel one more blow the abdomen and keel over while I retch up nothing but air—there's pure aggression in the force of the blow, but no intent to kill.

I look back up at Alexi, no fight left in me—he's won, that much is clear. His expression suggests there's none left in him either. He's short of breath from the adrenaline and there's no smile on his face.

"You're going to regret it later," Alexi says. "You're going to look back at that moment for the rest of your life and wonder why you didn't let me fall." He takes a deep breath, moves back a step, and then steps in to kick me one last time. The kick connects. It's strong enough to make me gag again but not anywhere near as painful as the last one.

Alexi grabs me under the shoulder and pulls me to my feet. "You remember the time when you stuck that gun in my face," he asks. His voice tickles my ear, and I can smell his breath in my face. He pats me on the shoulder before he says, "We're even now."

Alexi heads for the chopper. I wipe my face to find my nose has already stopped bleeding and the blood is already drying. After spitting a wad of blood onto the ground, I follow behind him. Once we're both in the chopper, Alexi says, "Vzlet."

It takes a minute before I realize he's not talking to the pilot, Markovic. When I look up at him he's staring at me and adjusting how he's leaning on his knees. He rolls his eyes after a few seconds and repeats the word. Then he nods his head toward me and waits.

I make my attempt at the word, trying to make sense of the unfamiliar syllables.

A snort escapes Alexi immediately. He repeats the word, his syllables slow and precise. I copy him as best I can. He doesn't laugh this time, proof that my second attempt was more promising than the first. Of course, even I can tell that my accent is pathetic compared to a native speaker.

"Tell Markovic," Alexi says.

I clear my throat before I speak into the channel. "Markovic," I say, "vzlet."

"Lieutenant Mikhailov," Markovic asks.

"As she says," Alexi speaks into the headset, and seconds later the helo takes to the skies.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Alexi. Hah. Seriously, I love this guy.

Cheers~

HK


	10. Truth and Lies

"_And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in a masquerade." –Alexander Pope_

**[September 28****th**** – 05:45:53]**

**[Elaine "Flash" Henderson]**

**[Sherbro, Sierra Leone]**

'Strelyatʹ' is the second word Alexi teaches me travelling back and forth between ultranationalist territories. He hammers it into my head as hard as he can, says it to me over and over until I react to it instantaneously. He has me repeat it to him again and again until it will pass for Russian when the word emerges from my own lips. Once the word is taught to me, he never uses the English equivalent again.

He never uses any English anymore, not unless he has important orders to convey to me. All other times, he speaks in Russian, speaks to me as naturally as if I had been speaking it with him from the moment we first met, and that means I'm hearing Russian almost constantly. Being my watchdog, Alexi and I are never apart. He hounds me day and night watching for the first sign of betrayal, yet speaking to me day and night.

For a time it's difficult to take; I can only understand phrases based on body language and other physical cues. Then some phrases, ones that I hear repeated over and over from day to day, start to take. They're nothing that I could repeat to him, nothing that I could translate to an English speaker—they are phrases that I understand only from hearing and reacting to them, like a child learning its first words. Without an English speaker to openly converse with, I start to feel like more of a foreigner than I ever have before.

"Strelyat'," Alexi says, and I obey the word every time he says it, shooting whatever target he points me toward. As I begin reacting faster to the word, he begins punishing me every time I don't react to it fast enough with a burn or a slap or a punch. It quickly takes, like shock therapy. "Strelyat'," Alexi says, and his target dies, no questions asked.

But not all of his targets are meant to die, and I learn to listen and watch. "Polozhipistolet," Alexi says, his gun pointed at his enemies, and they put their weapons down. "Obsuzhdenie," he says, and they start spilling their guts. "Vypolnitʹ," he says with a sneer, and they run away with not even their dignity left.

"Strelyat'," he says, and they die.

It's like that for days, as we face Makarov's enemies from checkpoint to checkpoint. Alexi never tells me who they are, and I never ask. And then we reach Sierra Leone.

"Sherbro, Sierra Leone," Alexi says when we arrive.

The place brings back memories of Brazil—relatively simple and highly concentrated dwellings. Of course, it's less humid, and there are notable differences between the people. They aren't at all shocked by our arrival and there are very few civilians if any at all. However, unlike the men at most of Makarov's bases, these men seem less guarded and cockier. They aren't afraid to stand taller than Alexi, to look tougher. Conversely, Alexi goes out of his way to look highhanded; he takes deliberate steps, hardens the ridge of his brows, looks each man straight in the eye.

I stick close to Alexi the moment we get off the chopper and follow his lead, doing my best to reinforce his imposing presence. It doesn't make me feel any better about the many armed men surrounding us. "Exactly how deep is Makarov's influence here," I ask, risking the English in the hopes that he'll respond so that I can understand.

"As deep as his pockets, one might say," Alexi whispers back to me.

"And how deep is that?"

"I can assure you, Makarov has very deep pockets," Alexi says with a smirk. "Still, I wouldn't offer them my trust. Any one of them might kill you for a kopek."

"And Makarov is trusting that a shipment be delivered through here? He must trust you a lot to oversee such an uneasy situation."

Alexi sneers. "Well," he says, "once the package gets through this checkpoint, it will be smooth sailing until it reaches London."

"London?" I mutter. Alexi only laughs in response and continues walking.

We approach a building that's not far from the LZ, but Alexi stops at the door before we enter. "Our broker –that is, the man that heads these mercs—we'll be conversing in English. I suggest you keep your mouth shut and pretend you don't understand a word of it," he says.

"Not a problem," I say. "Although I don't understand why you'd bother even keeping up the illusion."

"Let's just say it will make your job easier," Alexi says. "Oh, and most of these men used to work for Jengo Kwame."

"Where did you—"

"If they suspect you are an American, who is to say they will not open fire on you?" Alexi smiles again and adds, "Keep your mouth shut. Consider it friendly…advice."

"Right," I mutter. He opens the door to the building scarcely before the word comes out of my mouth.

"Kwesi," Alexi says once the door shuts behind us.

The man called Kwesi smiles and reveals a row of crooked teeth with several gold-capped molars. He shakes Alexi's hand like an old friend, but everything in their stares suggests they are, at worst, enemies, at best, rivals. "Alexi Mikhailov. I should have guessed that Makarov would send you, ah?"

"I trust you've been keeping this place well defended," Alexi says.

"Yeah, yeah," Kwesi says. "What does he pay us for, ah? This place secure."

"It seems that way," Alexi says, "but I've heard otherwise."

"Rumors, yeah? Trouble in other places, but none here. We're keeping a tight watch."

"And what about these other places?"

"Raids, weapons deals," Kwesi says, "but when isn't there? So many places engaged in civil war, but we've seen the effects of the real war. We know where the money is at."

"And if you still want in on it, you'll make sure our next shipment makes it through here intact," Alexi says. To that, Kwesi frowns, and his demeanor darkens. The friendliness is suddenly gone and, with it, the façade of peaceful negotiation. Alexi hands Kwesi a slip of paper, and Kwesi reaches for it disdainfully. He doesn't even look away from Alexi to see what's on it.

"What is this?" Kwesi says.

"Orders from Makarov."

Kwesi crunches the piece of paper in his fist, wrinkling the corners and creasing the center. "We have our orders, yeah?" he says. "He is not our leader. We do not follow him for loyalty."

"There will be extra compensation, of course," Alexi says. "Do not think Makarov has forgotten the nature of our relationship."

Kwesi glares at Alexi for a moment longer before unfolding the paper and reading the words on the page. When he looks back up at Alexi, he glances and points his head toward me. "_He's_ going to be in charge?"

"He doesn't speak English," Alexi says, and the familiar lie almost feels real. "You won't have to take orders from him. Just follow Makarov's orders and everything should go according to plan."

"And where will you be?"

"Leaving. I have business that I must attend to elsewhere. Just as well, I'd be rid of your company sooner rather than later."

"The feeling is mutual," Kwesi says. "Why come at all if you are not needed here?"

"I'll be viewing your accounts and logs as well as overseeing their destruction," Alexi says. "Ensuring all traces are disposed of properly is very important, you understand. Once it is done, I'll be out of your way."

"I will need time to gather them here," Kwesi says.

"Of course. I have business to discuss with my subordinate in any case. I will return within the hour to complete my duties here," Alexi says.

Their parting is anything but friendly—a grunt here, a grunt there—and we head out the door immediately. Alexi leads us through the village along a canal between a long stretch of houses. A long silence passes between Alexi and me until we're out of earshot of Kwesi and his men, and Alexi ventures English again.

"The shipment will be here in a week, and it's up to you to make sure no one steals it from under our noses," Alexi says.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that why Makarov hired all of these mercenaries," I ask. "It's not like one person is going to make a difference in the outcome."

"Kwesi and his men are here to make sure none of our enemies steal our shipment. You're here to make sure Kwesi and his men do not steal the shipment from us."

"So I'm your insurance. Great," I say. "I suppose I should feel flattered that Makarov trusts me more than Kwesi. Still, I'm not sure I understand why I'm doing this alone. It seems like he'd want someone like you on something as important as this. At the very least, I would expect him to keep you as my watchdog. Why the sudden change?"

"Makarov doesn't trust you," Alexi says. "Not in the slightest. He does, however, trust your goal."

"My goal," I echo with a cocked brow.

"Yes, whatever goal it is that has you betraying your own country to work for him," Alexi says. "If that shipment ends up in the wrong hands, I can assure you that it will be over for both you and your little friend."

The lie comes to my lips before I even know I'm conjuring it up. "Who, Archer? I don't care what you do with him."

Alexi snickers. "I'll be sure to tell him that the next time I see him."

"That still doesn't explain why you're not staying. Makarov has had you spying on me for weeks," I say.

Alexi stops between the canal and a house sitting atop the small ridge next to it. The canal continues flowing through a grate that goes through the ridge and to the other side. Alexi looks around briefly, and I follow his eyes. The grate is in a blind spot, buildings and small ridges on all sides with no clear sights to it except for the way we came. All of the walls facing us are clear of windows and doors. The ground below us is moist and sticky, suctioning my feet to the mud.

Alexi steps into the canal and sticks his fingers under the grating. He pulls the grate free easily and points into the short tunnel. I step into the murky water and enter ahead of him. Behind me he replaces the grate, once again with ease, and steps around me to the center of the tunnel. He stops there and faces me.

"I wasn't lying when I spoke to Kwesi," Alexi says. "I have other matters to attend to. I know I told you not to speak English in front of him, but did you really forget how to understand it as well?"

"You've been leading a game of lies from day one," I say. "I'm never sure what to believe."

Alexi laughs under his breath at that. "Then you're smarter than I thought," he says. "I have to pave the way for this shipment," Alexi says. "Believe it or don't."

"To London?"

Alexi shifts his weight and smiles, and then he turns away. He faces the wall in the tunnel and pries his finger into a small crack. When I look closer at it, I can tell that it's deliberate. Alexi puts great force behind his pull and eventually yanks a door made from a thin slab of cement on top of drywall away from the wall. The doorway is just large enough for someone to slip through. Alexi cues for me to go first, so I bend down and crawl through the opening ahead of him. Once again, he follows behind after closing the door behind him. No light makes it through the cracks, and from this side it looks almost like normal drywall save for the handle screwed to the door.

My eyes take time to adjust to the dark and the room is impossible to stand straight up. I get to my feet anyway and settle for bending over. Once I get my bearings, I see a small room before me filled with various supplies including weapons, first aid, and non-perishable food. There's a short staircase on the opposite wall leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling that's not much bigger than the door we just came through.

"This is the basement of the house sitting on the ridge," I ask.

"Yes," Alexi says. "It's my own personal bunker."

"What, to keep yourself safe from the mercenaries?" I say. I can't help the laugh that follows.

"You laugh," Alexi says, "but my words earlier were the truth. These men would kill you for one kopek."

"Even though Makarov wants me to be 'in charge' here?"

"The trapdoor is buried under floorboards and rubble and old furniture. The house is abandoned. The mercenaries do not know about it," Alexi says. "That secret door through the drain tunnel is the only way in or out, so it's in your best interest to remember how to get here."

"All rivers flow to the sea," I say.

"Good. Hopefully you won't have to use it," he says.

"How will I know if I should?"

"I think you know the answer to that question."

"You know, ever since the Caucasus Mountains, it's seems like the people I work with are trying to kill me more than my enemies," I say, and I'm a little surprised at how true the words feel.

"Then perhaps you need to spend time figuring out exactly who your enemies are," Alexi says.

"That should be easy," I say. "It's not like I have any friends."

"None of us do," Alexi says with a sneer. He opens the secret door and leads the way out. This time, I shut the door behind us. I take time to examine the crack and memorize the door's location. If I _do_ have to use it, there won't be time to make any mistakes.

"Tell me," I say to Alexi once we emerge from the tunnel and close the grating behind us, "why show me this?"

"Didn't we just have this conversation?"

"No, I mean, why bother? I was under the impression that you didn't care whether I lived or died."

"Has that changed," Alexi asks sardonically.

"First you fabricate my identity in front of Volk, then you start trying to teach me Russian—"

"'Trying' being the key word…"

"Then you fabricate my identity _again_ in front of Kwesi, and now this. I don't understand why you would even bother when Makarov stands to lose nothing by losing me."

"Makarov can still use you," Alexi says. "And you're more useful to him if you understand a bit of Russian."

"He can still use me, but he doesn't _need_ me," I say.

"Of course not," Alexi says. He stops near the building where we met Kwesi not long ago and glances around to make sure no mercs are within earshot. "You're expendable. You're also skilled. A skilled and expendable soldier is sometimes more useful than a skilled and invaluable one," he says.

"And this has nothing to do with that day in the helo," I say.

Alexi laughs almost loud enough to draw serious attention. He holds his gut, most likely for show, but doesn't stop laughing for several minutes.

"Something funny," I ask.

Alexi moves his finger as though wiping a tear from his eye and says, "Believe this. If I wanted to pay you back for that incident on the helicopter, _this_ is not the way I would do it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some business inside. Confidential business."

"Then I suppose this is where we part ways," I say. "I can't say I'll be sorry to see you go."

"You'll miss the game," he says with a smirk. "You'll miss the lies."

"Why on earth would I miss that?"

"There is a saying," Alexi says. "A lie is the truth in a masquerade. You may not believe it now, but I think you will find you have been more true to yourself in the last few weeks than you have in your entire lifetime."

"And I'm supposed to believe you now?"

"You can believe whatever you wish," Alexi says. He turns toward the building and start walking away. He doesn't look back at me, but I can't hear the smile in his voice, and, with a final wave of his hand, he says, "Istina ne menyaet·sya."


	11. First Contact

"_Few delights can equal the presence of one whom we trust utterly." –George MacDonald_

**[October 5****th**** – 14:45:03]**

**[John Price]**

**[Bamako, Mali]**

"_The Russian President never arrived in Hamburg for the peace summit. With his whereabouts currently unknown, no one is certain what this means for the peace treaty..."_

You never really get used to hearing news like this. Just when you think things may start going your way… It just goes to show you that it doesn't matter which way the wind is blowing if the fire is still burning.

"Looks like Makarov just played his next hand," Soap says.

Of course, even if we know that much, we have no idea which cards he holds. Still, it isn't a game of Poker without the Poker face. "If he puts himself back on the grid, he wants it to be known," I say.

"So where do we start hunting?"

Yuri leans forward onto the table and into the light. "Kamarov managed to get us some useful data," he says. "Coupled with what we've heard from Nikolai's few remaining contacts throughout Europe, we've got a lead." Yuri pulls up his map on the computer and starts drawing out our location. He traces the screen with his finger as he speaks. "Here in Africa. Makarov's been using a local paramilitary group to move shipments into Sierra Leone. From there, they go towards Morocco and into Spain."

"He's moving north," Soap mumbles.

"Right towards her majesty's doorstep. What's the cargo?" I say.

"Up until now?" Yuri asks. "No idea, but based on ultranationalist movement, he's been paving the way for something. Something big. Whatever it is, it must be important."

Makarov doesn't make a habit out of making things important. His plans are always flexible. His soldiers are always expendable. If it's important to Makarov, then it's important to me. "Then I want it," I tell the others. Soap catches eyes with me a gives a sharp nod. Yuri follows suit. Nikolai watches from the corner of the room with sharp eyes, catching everything, understanding everything. We may not be able to change the direction of the wind just yet, but, together, we might be able to start dousing the flames.

"We can use the river to get in close," Soap says. He traces his own finger along the small computer screen. "There's a factory in the camp. They may store the shipments there. Our real problem isn't finding the shipments, though. The PRF's been waging genocide in the highlands for months. They'll be everywhere."

"Makarov wouldn't let this travel lightly if it didn't serve a greater purpose," I say, "and there's a chance the bastard will be there personally to see things off. If he's back on the grid, then so are we."

"Then we've got our work cut out for us," Soap says.

Yuri leans back out of the light and says, "Finally doing the thing we should have done weeks ago."

Soap has a hand gripping Yuri's collar within seconds. "We talked about this," he says. "Makarov had to be the one to make the first move. We can't afford to be reckless here."

Yuri doesn't flinch. "There's a difference between being careful and being a coward."

"And there's a different between being eager and being a bampot," Soap shouts.

"Knock it off," I yell. The two of them stop immediately but don't turn their gaze from one another. "You can rip out each other's throats later. After we take down Makarov. Or you can walk. Right here, right now. I don't give a damn if you two like each other or not, but I'm not giving up a chance to get Makarov just because you two can't keep your heads around each other for more than a few minutes. So which is it going to be?"

Soap answers by taking his hand from Yuri's collar, and Yuri answers by keeping his silence.

"Good," I say. "Nikolai, get ready to fly us into Sherbro. We need to do this now."

"Agreed," Nikolai says. Soap and Yuri are out the door one after the other before Nikolai even moves. Before he goes, he steps up next to me and says, "I hope those two will be able to work together under real pressure."

"They can do it. They don't have a choice."

The trip to Sierra Leone takes several hours, enough time to breathe. Enough time to think. Most importantly, enough time to plan. Not that there's much planning you can do when you're going in blind. Still, no matter the obstacles, the objective's the same. Get in, find the shipment, get out. Only this time we're working without rules, without red tape, without SOP. Time will tell whether that will work in our favor or not.

Of course, truth be told, I cut through the red tape a long time ago.

Look where it's gotten us.

It shouldn't have to be said. It should never have to be said. Still, I express the importance to the others about no civilian casualties. They brush it off as if it's a given, and it should be. We've sacrificed a lot to get to where we are today: our jobs, our reputations, our friends—hell, our whole lives. If we start sacrificing our morals too, what will we be then? "Don't let yourselves become the monster that Makarov is," I tell them, and they shrug the weight of my words aside. "We're playing Makarov's game, but that doesn't mean we have to play by his rules," I tell them, and they mutter it off as if it isn't anything they haven't heard before. "Soap, how's that wound?"

"It's healed," Soap says. "Stop worrying, old man."

"I just need to know if you're ready for firefights."

"I'm always ready."

Before we know it, our feet are wet. Literally and figuratively. The trip from the LZ to the village takes less than an hour of muddy shoes and soaked clothes. When we get in close enough, we fully submerge ourselves, only surfacing momentarily for air. The village comes into view quickly, a dead-looking little hamlet that looks like heat and sand and trouble have blown it out repeatedly since it was founded. There aren't even any civilians in sight.

"Nikolai, we're just outside the village," I say once we surface for good.

"Copy," Nikolai says in my ear. "I'll pick you up in one hour."

"The factory isn't far from here," I say to the others. "Makarov's cargo should be there. Keep it silent. Let's move."

Soap angles back to Yuri and mutters, "Maintain a low profile. The militia's all over this area."

"Soap," I say, "try not to die this time."

Soap chuckles. "You worry about yourself, old man."

We push forward through the river. It's full of sludge, garbage, and probably other human waste that would be better not to mention, but the stench is negligible. The water is probably clean enough for most that don't have any, but any person from a well-to-do city would be mad to bathe in or drink from it. The water was probably clear once, back when this town was good-as-new.

We keep pushing through the sludge until we see a bridge not too far ahead of us. Two vehicles approach from the road that crosses it. Soap is the first to notice it. "Vehicles approaching," he says.

"Get down," I mutter. I lead the way out of the river and into some tall grass just along the shoreline. Soap and Yuri follow close behind and go prone in the foliage. The minute we hit the ground, the vehicles stop on the bridge. One man gets out. The man shares a few words with the militia still in the truck, and then they drive off and leave the man behind.

"Setting up patrols," Yuri whispers.

"Makarov's shipment may have just gotten here," Soap says.

"Or they're getting ready for someone to come pick it up," I say. "Let's move. Soap, take the man on the bridge."

"Copy that," Soap says. We all stand, and Soap moves ahead of us. The sentry sees Soap, but too late. Before the man can call out, he has a knife buried into his throat. Once the man stops struggling, Soap throws his body over the bridge and into the river.

"Move," I say once the deed is done. We head up the road but stick to the tall grass and shuffle our feet as silently as possible.

"Two x-rays, eleven o'clock," Soap says.

"Take 'em out." Soap takes one man and I take the other. Just as the mutt behind the fence starts barking, Yuri takes it out. If there are any other militia close by, they're none the wiser.

"Clear," Soap says.

"Move," I say.

Behind me, Yuri says, "Where are all the villagers? This place is like a ghost town."

"I hear that," Soap says with a scoff.

"They may be hostages," Yuri says.

"If we see them, we'll do what we can, but the shipment is our top priority," I say.

Yuri snorts and mutters, "We shouldn't bother with the villagers at all."

"I want to get to Makarov too," Soap says, "but that doesn't mean we have to become him."

"It might," Yuri mumbles.

"Cut the chatter. Move to that shed up ahead," I say.

I hear the voices when I hit the doorway. As I cross the room, I whisper, "Stay down. Hostiles up ahead."

Soap follows me to the opposite door and we take either side while Yuri crouches behind us and keeps an eye on our six. Ahead of us, militiamen are circled around an older man who is on his knees with his hands on his head. One of the militia has a gun pointed at the man, and another has a gas tank in his hand.

"They're gonna torch the poor bastard," Soap says.

"Let's light them up before they light him up," I say.

Soap reacts instantly and takes out two of the militia before they even have a chance to blink. Yuri follows his lead, albeit reluctantly, and takes out two more of the militia before they can fight back. I take out two myself. The last starts to run for it, but Soap snipes him before he's out of sight. Without taking the time to offer gratitude, the old man stands and runs the other way.

"They've been camped here for a long time. Why are they just now executing villagers?" Soap says.

"Could be they're expecting trouble, which means Kamarov's intel was right on the money. This shipment must be an important one for them to start tying up loose ends."

"We should keep moving," Yuri says.

"Let's go," I agree.

We head up through a few more houses before coming up another road and another set of tangos with hostages. We don't have a chance to move up before more vehicles come down the road, so we hold.

"Don't do anything stupid, lads," I whisper.

It takes several minutes before the vehicles drive away again. The militia execute the two hostages before we can get to them, so we continue to stay back. The hostiles turn away once the deed is done, and we sneak past them and onto the road. Seconds later, I hear the roar of engines ahead of us.

"Get off the road," I say. "Get down! Now!" Yuri leads the way into the tall grass on the left. Soap and I fall in after him and go prone just before the vehicles come into view. "Easy," I whisper as the vehicles drive by. Once the roaring engines fade from earshot, I say, "All clear."

We move through another shed, wait for more militia to move past us, and meet back with the river up ahead, complete with a bridge and two militiamen. After a few more vehicles drive past, Soap and I drop the two militiamen, drag their bodies into the river, and move up. One more man never sees my knife coming and dies before he gets the opportunity to alert others.

"I see the factory," Soap says. "It's just up the road."

"Right," I say. "Soap and I will advance. Yuri, you're on overwatch. Get to a position on the roof and cover us."

We move for the houses ahead while Yuri snipes hostiles coming in from the ahead of us. Soap and I continue to move up to the factory one after the other until we reach the door and breach. Soap gets the left and I get the right. After a quick once through, I mutter, "Clear."

Soap scoffs. "Clear? This place is bloody empty."

"Nikolai," I say through the coms, "the factory is a dead end. No sign of Makarov or the shipment."

"Maybe they moved it to the militia's headquarters at the center of town," Nikolai says.

"Maybe that's why they've been clearing out the villagers," Yuri mumbles. "They needed to move somewhere more defensible."

"No shit," I say. "There were a lot less militiamen than I was expecting. Now we know why. We're moving there now."

"Heads up," Soap shouts.

I hear the hostiles before I see them as they open fire on the shed. "We're compromised," I shout into the radio. "Regroup! Yuri, rally on me! Soap, hold position!"

Soap shoots back at the hostiles, bringing down two tangos with his sniper rifle before switching to his AK. "We're not gonna be able to hold this place for long," he shouts at me. "There's too many of them."

"Yuri, hurry up," I yell.

"RPG," Soap shouts.

We both dive from the factory as bits of debris fly behind us. Yuri meets up with us at that moment, but before we get our warm-and-fuzzy reunion, more bullets spray over us. "Yuri, push forward," I yell.

We move forward with militia on our tails and take out hostiles in front of as quickly as we can. As the concentration of houses increases, it becomes easier to dodge around corners and elude the enemies. Once bullets stop spraying directly around us, we climb up a ladder and move into a house.

Soap scoffs again through a few pants. "I think they know we're here," he says.

"All that matters is Makarov's cargo. Keep moving," I say. We jump down on the other side of the house into more murky water. The water starts erupting around us as we take more fire from the front. "Technical dead ahead," I yell when I see the truck stop on the road in front of us. Yuri fires on the gunner before he gets a chance to engage. Soap and I take out the driver and the other passengers. "Yuri," I say, "man the .50 cal and lay down cover fire!" As another truck emerges from over the hill up the road, I shout, "Put fire on that technical."

More militia move in on the rooftops around us. Yuri takes most of the out while Soap and I try to gain ground on the road in front of him. Another truck comes down the road, knocking the other out of the way and raining bullets on us. Yuri takes shots at the engines and the vehicle explodes, taking the technical and the other passengers out with it, but the militia keep coming until they drive Soap and I back.

And then there are explosions.

Yuri's truck is the first to be impacted. The explosion barely grazes the truck, and it goes flying, sending Yuri flopping from the truck and slamming against the ground. "Mortar fire," Soap yells as he heads for Yuri. "Get up! We gotta get the hell out of here," he says to him as he helps him to his feet. He doesn't take any time to recover and we bolt in the other direction with the militia hot on our heels. "The whole militia is headed straight for us," Soap shouts.

"Don't stop moving, or they'll dial us in," I yell.

Once back in the village and zigzagging between houses, the mortars are less accurate. Bullets spray all around us, and, once they start coming from our front, we dive into a house and move to the rooftops, bypassing militia lying in wait for us on the ground. The mortars start getting closer to their marks now that we're in plain sight, but still no dice. The militia behind us seem to get further and further away and the militia below us start scrambling to catch us as we pick up the pace and jump to our next target. I land first, then Soap. When Yuri hits the rooftop, it bends under his weight and collapses, sending him back to ground level.

I don't notice it until I hear Soap yell, "Yuri!"

I dig in to a halt and lean over the side of the roof just barely. "Yuri, I see you! Just keep moving!"

I continue moving forward with Soap right behind me and help Yuri take out the militia to his front as we move. We run out of rooftop and regroup with Yuri at the top of a slope ahead of us. A tower comes into view. Before Yuri or I have a chance to say it, Soap says, "They're firing mortars from that tower!"

"Yuri," I yell, "slot the bastards!"

Yuri reacts faster than I can blink, and the two militiamen at the tower go down, one of them tipping over the railing and flopping to the ground with a loud _crack_. "They're down," Soap says as he scans the area. "We got a large group of militia headed our way."

"Then let's give them a proper welcome," I mutter. "Yuri, man the mortar on the roof."

Yuri smiles at that and races for the tower. Soap and I position ourselves for overwatch and covering fire. Once Yuri is at the mortar cannon and Soap and I are settled in, Soap says, "Start putting shells downrange."

"Hose the bastards," I add.

Yuri fires the mortar with expert precision, taking out a group of militia and two technicals that drive into the village. A few more groups of militia spill into the village along with more trucks, but Yuri eliminates them quickly. Soap and I barely have to fire a shot. Eventually, bullets stop spraying us entirely.

"That's good for now," I say. "Let's move. The center of town is at the church just up ahead. We need to hit it now. We're running out of time."

Yuri regroups with us and Soap leads us to a drain tunnel. He takes off the cover and says, "Through here."

Yuri and I follow behind him. I press the button on my radio. "Nikolai, approaching the church now. And you're sure the cargo will be there?"

"It's the only area they could have moved it to. If it's not there, then it's already on its way to Europe," he says.

"Let's hope he's right," Soap says. "And wrong."

We run into a few militia on the other side of the drain tunnel then a few more on the rooftops around us. We take them out quickly, the thin numbers a welcome break from an army and mortar fire. Soap scans the area and gives the all-clear as we approach the only building standing between us and the church. "Soap," I say to him, "get the door!"

The door leads us through a basement that leads back out to the church courtyard. I hear an engine hum once we emerge, and Soap yells, "Price, there's the bird. They're moving the cargo."

"We're out of time," I shout. "Get to that church now!"

Militia spill out of the buildings around us and engage. Yuri takes up the right flank and moves through across the balconies, taking out the overhead militiamen as he goes, while Soap and I clear the ones that come out into the open. When we reach the church courtyard, Yuri regroups with us and gives the all-clear for his side. Soap gives his shortly after.

The church doors swing open before we can stack up, and some militiamen emerge with hyenas at their sides. Soap goes for the hyenas first while Yuri and I focus on the men. "Damn dogs," I hear Soap mutter to himself. Then he says, "Church is clear!"

We move through the dilapidated church and to the back door. "Stack up on the door," I say. Yuri takes up the front with Soap and I on either side of him. When I give the okay, he kicks it down and heads through. He's tackled by a hyena as soon as he gets through the door, but guards against its bite before it can get him. Soap and I focus on the militiamen behind him while he takes care of the mutt. Yuri takes out two militiamen of his own before putting the hyena down. Once all of the hostiles are eliminated, Yuri gets to his feet and we move up.

The chopper is already flying away when we reach it. "They're getting away with the cargo," I yell as I spray a few bullets at them. A few bullets hit their mark but barely make a dent against the helo. When I hear the militiaman groaning at my feet, I fire a few bursts into his chest until I take a breath and regain control.

"Damn," I mutter once I have my breathing under control. "Nikolai, the shipment's gone. We missed our window. Yuri, find out what's in the crates they left behind."

Nikolai responds in my ear seconds later. "What about Makarov?"

"I don't know that he was ever here," I say. "Just get us out of here."

"Copy that."

"Yuri, what did you find," I ask.

Instead of a response from Yuri, I hear another voice. "Polozhipistolet," it says. Russian, no doubt about it.

I turn to see Yuri step back from the crate with his hands in the air, one of them still gripping his AK. He stops moving back and drops his weapon seconds later. Soap pivots and moves up against the crates without making a sound. I stay where I am and train my gun toward the crate opening, ready for whoever comes out.

Yuri keeps his eyes fixed on the hostile, keeping himself from giving Soap away. He moves back slowly, drawing the person forward. I see the gun first, then eventually the sleeves of the uniform. The tango steps forward a few more feet until he's out of the crate. I can still see the man's white skin despite his balaclava. Between the Russian, the uniform, and the skin color, he's definitely not one of PRF.

Soap has the same thought. Instead of shooting the hostile, he takes the man from behind, looping an arm around his neck and grabbing his arm. In an attempt to subdue his weapon, Soap reaches around with his other arm to slam upwards on the tango's elbow, but he expects the attack and moves his arm with the force, avoiding any serious and incapacitating injury. He retaliates with his feet and loops one between Soap's legs. He loosens the grip on his gun in order to grab Soap's right arm. Halfway through the motion, he decides to abandon the weapon entirely and get his hands free. In one fluid movement, he loops Soap's arm over his head and twists him around. Soap's feet now clumsily looped around the tango's foot, he swipes his leg out and sends Soap to the ground. He pulls out a knife with his left hand and pins it against the back of Soap's neck.

"Drop the weapon," I yell once the fight is over. The hostile stays frozen, eyes fixed on Soap. He stops breathing after he hears my voice and starts again only when Yuri picks up the man's own gun and points it to the back of his head. No one moves. Seconds go by. Minutes.

The man gets to his feet slowly and steps away from Soap. He spares me a glance but doesn't let go of the knife.

"Drop the weapon," I repeat. He fumbles with the knife in his left hand, his eyes wide as if he can't believe he just lost this fight.

Before he has a chance to drop it, clouds of sand start erupting around us as bullets start spraying from the other side of the crate. Soap pulls himself into the crate before getting to his feet, and Yuri dives in behind him. I pivot behind the crate while the Russian does the same, shielding his head pointlessly with his knife still in his hand. The bullets stop long enough for the Russian to tip his head out. He pulls it back in quickly and shields his eyes from the sand exploding around him. When his lifts his knife again, I point my AK at him, but he pays me no mind and scrambles to his feet.

He puts the knife back in his vest and pulls a frag from his belt. After cooking it for a few seconds he tosses it over the crate and towards the ammo spray. Without missing a beat, he beckons us with a hand and shouts, "Sleduĭte," and runs for the church doors.

"Price," Soap shouts, voice muffled through the crate wall, "what should we do?"

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," I yell, "for now. Follow him!"

Yuri leans out of the crate and throws another frag before running to the church himself. Soap and I follow behind him and see the Russian waiting for us on the other end. Once he sees we're following, he races ahead without bothering to look back and see if we're keeping up. We catch up to him easily, though he may have been deliberately slowing his pace for us. Once we reach him, we start going full speed back the way Soap, Yuri, and I came, across the churchyard, through the houses, into and out of a basement, and toward the sewer drain. Hyenas bark behind us, and the Russian spares a look back to see if any tangos are in sight. Then he shoots into the sewer drain, pausing halfway through.

Yuri, Soap, and I stop behind him and turn back to provide suppressing fire if need be while he fumbles against the wall with his fingers. A few seconds later, he pulls a portion of the wall free, opening some sort of door and cues his hand toward the opening. Yuri dives in first and Soap follows behind him. I go next, and, once I'm through, the Russian follows in behind me and shuts the door. He keeps his ear up to the door and listens.

I turn to Yuri while the man's attention is drawn and nod my head toward him. Yuri nods at me and lifts his arm, a pistol ready for the man whenever he turns around. The man listens for a while, maybe ten minutes or so before he sighs and turns. When he sees the gun in his face, he falls from his heels onto his rear and stares into the hole.

"Now that we've got you cornered," I say to him, "you're going to tell us everything you know about Makarov."

Yuri shakes his head and says, "He's not Russian."

"He was speaking in Russian back there, wasn't he?"

"Russian, yes, but with an unmistakable American accent," Yuri says. "Whoever he is, he's not Russian."

I turn to the man, though looking at him now he's small, a young man, maybe, just getting into his years, or just slight. "Who are you," I ask him.

"A friend," he says. His voice sounds it, too—boyish with a more feminine tone.

"I'll be the judge of that," I say.

Soap sticks a hand on Yuri's arm before anyone gets in another word and says, "Price, wait."

When I look back at him, his eyes are wide and his skin pale. "What's gotten into you," I ask.

He doesn't answer me, doesn't even look at me. His eyes are fixed on the man before us. He doesn't suffer a blink and doesn't let himself look away. He takes a step closer. "Who…?"

The man on the ground before us sighs with relief and says, "Like I said." He reaches slowly behind his head but doesn't take notice of Yuri's gun as he moves it a bit closer. He never pulls out a weapon, though. Instead, he pulls the balaclava from over his head and says, "A friend."

I place my own hand on Yuri's arm when I see her face and say, "Stand down. We know this one."

Yuri looks at me incredulously and says, "Who the hell is he?"

For the first time in a long time, I manage a smile. "_She_ is who _she_ says," I mutter. Flash manages a smile back at me, and I say, "A friend."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **The moment we've all been waiting for!

In one of the reviews for the preceding chapter, it was requested that I put translations for the Russian being used. Believe me, I thought about it before writing the chapters, but ultimately decided against it since Flash is the one hearing it and she doesn't really know what most of it means either. I provided context so that most phrases she learns should be understood. Other's before that aren't really important enough to know. However, since the last conversation between Flash and Alexi was kind of important, the translation for _"istina ne menyaet·sya" _is _"truth does not change"_.

If you're truly interested in translations for the other statements, here's a fun fact! Even though the Russian in this story is phonetic, you can still copy and paste the phonetic spelling into Google Translate as long at you have "Allow Phonetic Typing" checked. The application will then offer you the Russian writing for the phrase. When you click on it, you should be able to see the translation into your respective language!

There probably won't be much Russian from this point forward, so you shouldn't have to worry about it anymore.

Until next time, all love~

HK


	12. Task Force 141

"_Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed." –Irene Peter_

**[October 5****th**** – 16:33:06]**

**[John "Soap" MacTavish]**

**[Sherbro, Sierra Leone]**

The voice.

The voice sounds familiar from the moment I first hear it, even speaking Russian. But I've encountered dozen of Russians throughout my career. I've had plenty of chance to hear Russians speak. Still, why would this voice sound familiar? There has to be something in particular about it, something that would make me remember the voice. The first thought that pops into my head is that it might be Makarov; I heard his voice at the Boneyard. It must have stuck with me.

Then the mercenaries open fire on us, and I know it can't be Makarov. His hires would never put him in such danger to get to us, and he would never help us get out of the crossfire. Beyond that, it only takes seconds for me to realize that the mercs shoot at the Russian first. At first it seems they're just trying to take us down, but the Russian dodges out of the way—dodges critical shots, not just stray bullets. Not a diversion. A target.

I know him from somewhere, but where? Was it five years ago? Did I encounter him while we were up against Imran Zakhaev? Some of the Russians were helping us in that war… Kamarov. Maybe he was working under him. The mission where I first met Nikolai, one of the other Russians following Kamarov's command—I might have encountered him then. Better yet, on that bridge when I thought everything was all over, when Zakhaev had us cornered, when Price slid his M1911 across the pavement so I could gun Zakhaev down, when Kamarov's men came practically out of nowhere and saved our lives. He could be one of the men that rescued me back then. If he is, this will be twice that he's saved my ass now.

When he takes us to his secret hideout, when we know we're safe from the mercs, Yuri's words only make the puzzle more difficult. "Russian, yes," he says, "but with an unmistakable American accent. Whoever he is, he's not Russian."

American, then. That means if I do know him from before, he _must_ have been an ally once. He could have been someone from the SAS, one of the men from my first mission with them. Not all of the guys from the first mission came with us to the village. I wouldn't have gotten a chance to remember his name. He could have also been one of the Marines working under SSGT Griggs during our race to stop the ICBMs. The Marines…

"Who are you," Price asks.

"A friend," is the response.

"I'll be the judge of that," Price says.

The Marines. The Marines is the answer after all, but not in the way I was thinking. The reason why I think I know this person, the reason why I think I recognize their voice is tied to the Marines. It's also impossible, unless people can come back from the dead now. Price did. We all thought he was gone, and he came back to us after all in the most unlikely of situations. Why not again? But that kind of thinking is too good to be true. Cheating death is the kind of luck you only encounter once in a lifetime, and I've already had three. The answer I want is just what I want to hear, what I want to remember—a delusion that will cause me to finally the finish the drawing in my journal or leave the face blank forever.

But, even if it is a lie, I have to be sure. I have to know. And I have to make sure Yuri doesn't do something we'd all regret. I stick a hand on his arm to lower his weapon, the first civil contact between us since we met. "Price," I say, "wait."

He takes one look at me and says, "What's gotten into you?"

I can't tear my eyes away from the soldier kneeling in front of us. The Russian uniform throws me for a loop, makes me second-guess myself. Why a Russian uniform? I don't know this person after all, I can't. Anyone working under Makarov, anyone flying his colors is no friend of mine. And yet the soldier says he is a friend, and, when I look into the soldier's eyes, I know it's the truth. The eyes—those same hazel eyes that I would stare into in those quiet moments, the ones that would never turn away from something in fear, the ones that would stare back at me and risk to show me weakness when they would show it to no one else.

I want it to be her. I need it to be her, but until I see, I can't know for sure.

"Who," I start.

The sigh is familiar, one of relief but also of fatigue. "Like I said," the soldier starts, and he reaches for his balaclava and pulls it over his head. I see the hair first, a brown that's dark at the roots and would turn golden if the sun hit it just right. When I look back to the hazel eyes fixed on me, I know it's her, and my heart feels like it's going to spill out of my chest and onto the floor. My mind is clouded by relief but also by dread, wondering if it's too good to be true.

"A friend," she says, and I want to smile, want to step forward and embrace her, make up for all of the lost time between us.

But when the balaclava is removed from her face, my heart stops and my relief is replaced only by horror.

"Stand down," Price says. "We know this one." But he sounds very far away—far _ahead_, as if he's moved into the future and I've been left behind.

"Who the hell is he," Yuri asks.

"_She _is who _she_ says," Price says. "A friend."

She smiles at that, but even with the return of her smile she looks different. It's not the same face anymore—hardened, yes, no doubt by everything that's happened to her since the last time we saw one another, but there's more. It's not the same face. The old face is gone, replaced by burn scars that almost make her unrecognizable. The Flash I remember no longer exists.

Price and Flash are both staring at me, waiting for me to say something. I pale at the thought that she's seen me blatantly staring at her scars, but I don't avert my eyes. It's too little too late for that. She tries to make light of it, though, tries to smile through it and ease the tension in the room. "Ugly, aren't they," she says. "I still haven't gotten used to looking in a mirror." She turns her head, hiding the scarred side from my view and showing the untouched side of her face. "Better?"

I can't tear my eyes away from her, can't get rid of the stone in my gut, but I do feel the tension ease. My shoulders loosen up and I let out and breath I didn't even know I was holding in. Price turns his gaze from me and back to Flash. He loosens up too. Flash is the only one that stays the same, her eyes fixed on me and a smile plastered on her face, and I can tell she's doing it for us, trying to make us feel better about what we see.

"We thought you were dead for sure," Price says.

"So did I," Flash says.

Price glances at Yuri. Yuri still has his eyes glued to Flash and his hands gripped tightly around his weapon. Yuri stares at Price for a long moment until Price nods and turns back to Flash. "We'll need to hear it. All of it."

Flash grimaces at that. "All of it," she repeats under her breath.

"You're wearing one of Makarov's uniforms," Price says. "You attacked us on contact. I want to trust you, but that doesn't mean I can afford to take chances."

"Makarov's men captured us at the safe house," Flash says.

Price stops her right there. "There are already holes in your story, Flash. Start from the beginning."

"Fine," she says with a hard look that I've never seen on her face before. "After you and the others left in pursuit of Makarov, Shepherd's men came for Worm and me. They went for Worm first. I don't know why. But I heard them, so I fought back when they came for me. I took one of their uniforms, hijacked a helicopter, and followed Shepherd to the safe house. Are you with me so far?"

Her tone is harsh, and I can't tell if it's to subdue to a hidden pain deep within her or if she's really turned as cold and callous as she sounds.

"Then Worm's dead?" Price says.

"They shot him in the head," Flash muttered. "His brains were all over the bed, but if you think he can come back from that, then I guess it's possible that he's alive."

Price snorts, a gesture that says he's getting fed up with her attitude, but he lets it slide and says, "What next?"

"I got to the safe house, but I was too late," Flash continues. "After my helicopter crash-landed, I was pretty much stranded there. Shepherd was long gone, but some of Makarov's men were still around. They took us captive—"

"Who? You and who else," I say. Speaking up helps me ease my own tension a little, and, with any luck, it will help dull her attitude and make the telling of the story a bit easier on all of us.

"Me and Archer," Flash says. "Archer and I ran into each other at the safe house, and then Makarov's men came along and took us hostage."

"Is Archer alive, then," Price asks.

Flash gives him another cold look then furrows her brows and says, "I don't know. I haven't seen him in almost a month. Makarov got us to join him, and then he separated us and I haven't seen him since."

"Wait," I say. "He got you to join him? You joined him?"

"It was a ploy," she says, her tone growing more agitated. "I didn't have much of a choice! I thought everyone else was dead. I figured if there was a way to stop Makarov, the only way was by joining him and—"

"And killing him if you ever got the chance," Price says. Flash nods. "I'm not so sure I would have done it differently myself."

"Anyway, he never intended for me to really work _with_ them," she says. "He was just using me to do some of his dirty work. He never planned to keep me around for too long, what happened today is evidence enough of that."

"Those mercs trying to kill you," I mutter.

"We were on the same side this morning," she says. Flash slams her fist down on the ground so hard I almost think a bone might break, but she doesn't flinch. "God DAMN it, I should have known. That's what that letter was about. That's why they were asking about me. This whole plan was doomed to fail from the start. I don't know why I ever thought this was going to work."

"You must have expected trouble," Yuri says. "You had this safe house ready for yourself."

Flash pauses and that and mumbles, "Yeah. I guess so." She sighs and adds, "I never actually thought I would have to use it."

"Well, we're here now," Price says. "You're sure it's safe?"

"I've been living amongst the enemy for weeks now, Price. I had to constantly what I said, what I did, I had to sleep with one eye open. Always," Flash says. "I'm not sure of anything anymore."

"Fair enough," Price mutters.

"So that's enough for you," Yuri asks. "She tells a little story, and you can trust her now."

I almost speak up to defend her, but Price beats me to it. "We have quite a history with her," he says. "Certainly more than we have with you. We can trust her."

"Maybe you can," Yuri says. "But I'll be keeping my eyes open."

"I won't take it personally," Flash says. "I don't trust anyone anymore."

I cringe at the words, not because of the implication behind them but because of the bitter harshness in her tone that's ringing with truth. She catches it out of the corner of her eye but makes an obvious effort to look like she doesn't notice. Silence hangs in the room after that, none of us entirely sure what to say next.

"Right," Price finally says. "I need to contact Nikolai. Once we have our bearings, we need to pull out of here. I suggest everybody rest up and lick your wounds while you can."

"_She's_ coming with us," Yuri asks.

"Flash, it's Flash," Flash says, "and if that's an issue, I don't see any problem in leaving _you_ behind."

"Easy, now," Price says, noting the rising tension in Flash's voice. "We need all of the manpower we can get. Yuri, there's no one you should rather have at your back than Flash. And, Flash, Yuri is a damn good shot. Unless one of you starts shooting the wrong way, no one is staying behind."

"I'd say that's fair," Flash says. "It'd be nice if we could at least get along. We don't have to like each other," she says to Yuri.

Yuri scoffs, turns to me, and says, "And here I thought I didn't like _you_."

Yuri turns around and settles in a corner, eyes fixed on Flash the whole time, while Price heads to the other side of the room, away from the door, to make his call in silence and where he's in no danger of being heard by anyone on the outside. Flash is looking at me by this point, a question lingering behind her eyes. Once it gave me a charge knowing I could guess what she was thinking and usually be right. Now I feel nothing but tension studying her eyes, wondering what she could possibly be thinking beneath that hardened face.

She looks away, but, just when I think I've earned a reprieve from having a conversation, she approaches me and sits down. She doesn't say anything at first, but she's still enough of the same person for me to know that she wants me to sit with her, so I do. Aside from Price contacting Nikolai on the radio and Yuri drumming his fingers against his gun, an uncomfortable silence fills the air between us for a time. Flash is the first one to speak.

"I'm making you uncomfortable," she says.

"No," I say almost before the end of her sentence slips from her mouth.

"I understand," she says, and she touches her fingers to the scars on her face and brushes over them as if memorizing every groove. "I was uncomfortable with it for a long time too. Still am, actually. It's probably pretty shocking to be reunited with someone you know and face you don't."

"Flash, it's not that… The scars aren't," I start, but I don't know how to finish and my words hang in my throat.

"They are pretty bad," she says. "And I'm sure I've changed more than a little bit otherwise too. It's okay." She gives me a small and crooked smile and says, "You look like you've lost some weight, but otherwise I'm glad to see that you haven't changed much."

I don't know what to say to that and end up staring at her with my jaw hanging half open and a furrow in my brows. Before I have a chance to recover, a chance to say a few words of my own, she reaches her hand underneath her vest and shirt and pulls the chain from around her neck. Once she pulls it over her head, I can see multiple tags hanging on it.

She hands the tags to me and says, "You should probably have this."

I take the chain from her tentatively and examine the names on the tags: Worm, Darren Anstett; Roach, Gary Sanderson; Ghost, Simon Riley—and, of course, her own tags in the mix. Flash. Elaine Henderson. I see their faces one by one as my eyes scan their tags, even Flash's old face, her healthy face. I immediately feel ashamed when I think of it that way, when I even have to visualize her face at all, as if she's not sitting here right beside me alive and well against all odds.

"I… tried to save them," she says suddenly, and I think I hear a hint of pain squeezing its way into her voice. "It was too much. I was too late. I saw the smoke, but there was so much pain. When I got there, so much blood—and the fire…"

"The fire," I mutter. "Is that… is that what did this to you?" I regret the words instantly. Even though they weren't intended to cause harm, they strike her that way, straight through the heart. Despite her bitter cold look, I can see the glassiness in her eyes.

"Did what to me, exactly," she asks with a scoff. "The burns? Yeah, sure. It was the fire. I was a fucking idiot to dive into them the way I did, I know. You don't have to say it. The fire caused this, caused _my face_," she says. "But the attitude? The bitterness? The regret? The fire didn't do that."

"Makarov," I mumble, and she seems upset immediately, but not because of the name.

"Actually," she says, forcing back a crack in her voice, "it was you."

"What? I—"

"I thought you were dead," she says without taking a breath. "I thought I was alone. I thought the last moment we would share together would be that bitter argument about whether or not I did the right thing, even though we both know it was right and we _both_ know it was _wrong_ too, and I thought I would regret forever that the last thing I would ever get to say to you wasn't the first thing I wanted you to know."

"Flash, I—"

"So even if nothing is the same anymore and even if this is the last time I get to say this to you, I'm telling you now," she says. Within a heartbeat, her arms are around my neck and her cheek is up against mine and her lips are brushing my ear. "I love you," she whispers. My body takes over then, and the time, the distance doesn't matter. Whatever's changed is no longer important, not how she looks, not how she sounds, not the fear bottled up inside my gut. The only thing that matters is that she's here, that I can still reach out and touch her, that, despite my reserves, the same Flash is still hidden in there somewhere. I put my arms around her, and a huge pain buried somewhere deep in my chest dissipates.

"Futsk," Yuri says suddenly. "I didn't realize the only reason we're trusting her is because you've been in each other's pants."

I slip my hands onto Flash's shoulders to ready myself for a violent reaction when I feel her body lurch, but she only sticks one hand up to him and a single offending finger. She doesn't even bother turning her head to look at him. Yuri grumbles in response and seems to grow louder when he sees the smile grow on my face and Flash's body shake with silent laughter.

"So you are still in there somewhere," I whisper.

"Excuse me," Yuri says, "but can we talk about how _you trust_ a spy just because you've fucked her once or twice? Believe me, spies always know how to fuck you in just the right way."

"That's enough," Price says. "We have more important things to worry about than your prepubescent behavior, like what you learned behind enemy lines, Flash, if you managed to learn anything at all."

Flash takes her arms from around me immediately, and, just like that, the moment is done almost as if it never happened at all. Her guard returns, her icy look, her serious face. Already I start to miss that inner Flash, the one hiding behind the layers of pain that built up in the weeks since we last saw one another, but it's buried without any signs that it's in there.

"I learned what I could, though it isn't much," she says. "It sheds more light on the past than it does on the present."

"Every little bit helps," Price says.

"I had a little run-in with Makarov's supplier, the same one that supplied him with these weapons today," she says. "Anyone have some paper?" I pull a pen and my journal out of my pack, open it to a blank page, and hand the pen to her. She gets to work drawing immediately as she says, "I don't know what the company is called, but I'm betting we can find out. They have a sigil that looks like this." She hands the journal to Price when she's done.

On one blank page, she's drawn an image of some kind of bird, a falcon maybe. Price studies the image for a brief second and says, "Fregata Industries."

"You know it?" Flash says.

"It's a shipping company based in Russia with headquarters in both Africa and South America," Price says.

"Somehow I'm not surprised," Flash says. "That symbol right there, it's the same one that was on the shipments of explosives being sent out by Alejandro Rojas. I'd bet you anything it was on the goods being shipped by Jengo Kwame too."

"Jengo Kwame," Price mutters.

"A weapons dealer we were hunting a couple of years ago," I say to Price. "The intel we recovered from spying on Rojas suggested the two of them were connected. Rojas took control of Kwame's assets after his death."

"Kwame was in charge, then Rojas took hold of the syndicate, maybe," Price says.

"I don't think so," Flash says. "Like I said, I had a run-in with Makarov's supplier. Not just the company. The man himself. You say Fregata Industries has headquarters in Africa and South America. It fits. Rojas was probably head of the South America HQ and Kwame the Africa HQ, but I think they both answered to someone else—a man named Viktor Volk Khristenko, and I think the company was inherited." She gestures with fingers on both hands to imply quotes around 'Volk.'

"What makes you think that," I ask.

"I was at his mansion making a monetary delivery," Flash says. "There were portraits of a bunch of old guys, all with plaques of the same symbols below their names. It was kind of hard to miss the family resemblance." Flash gives a crooked smile that's further distorted by her scars and says, "Fregata Industries has been around for quite a while, without a doubt. The weapons dealing might be new."

"So you met this Volk face to face," Price says.

"Yeah, in Germany," I say. "I don't know if he was at a hideout or if that's where he normally lives. We were only there for an hour, but, even though his name is Russian, he has a German accent. At the very least, he spends a lot of time there."

"Do you know if Volk ever makes contact with Makarov?" Price says.

"I don't know," Flash says. "It seemed like Alexi—uh, Makarov's second-in-command—is their go-between. I was with him when we delivered the shipment to Volk. They sounded like they'd encountered each other several times before."

"You said the shipment was monetary," I say, jumping in during an opportune silence. Flash nods. "Do you know what Makarov was buying?"

"You mean more specifically than weapons," Flash asks sardonically. "I have no idea, but it didn't sound like a typical shipment of weapons. Alexi seemed very adamant that this shipment be delivered on time in full, but they didn't dish out anything that would hint at what it was. I can tell you one thing for sure, though. That package that just got away from you was it."

"Did you get a look inside it?" Price asks.

Flash shakes her head. "I tried to get a look at it when it arrived, but it was under constant guard from the moment it got here to the moment it left. I wasn't even able to find out where it's headed."

"We think it's headed to London," Price says. "Makarov's movements look like they've been clearing the way for something, and all of his movement points north."

"Then it looks like you guys have more useful information than I do," Flash says.

"That's not necessarily true," Price says. "Someone might be able to use the bits you've picked up along the way to piece together a few things."

"Who would that someone be if that someone's not us?" Flash asks.

"Our ace in the hole," I say. "It might be time to contact him."

"I agree," Price says. "First things first, we need to get the hell out of here."

"How long until Nikolai comes for us," Flash asks.

"We need to lay low for a few hours," Price says, "and then have Nikolai come to meet us."

"I think it would be best to backtrack and have Nikolai pick us up in the churchyard," Flash says.

"I agree," Price says.

"What about the mercs," I ask.

"They'll still be there, of course," Flash says. "This whole village is theirs. They won't just up and leave."

"With any luck, they'll spread their numbers thin looking for us or think we've left and lighten their patrols," Price says.

"And we can head for the church with minimal resistance. Nikolai can meet us when we get there. We can hole up inside the church for a while if we have to," Flash says.

"How long until we do this, exactly," Yuri asks. "The sooner we get out of this place, the better."

"We can wait until nightfall," I say. "The night should give us a bit of cover. We might even be able to hide out in the church until Nikolai gets there without encountering any resistance at all."

"That's the plan, then," Price says. "You three should get some rest. I'll keep watch until it's time."

"No way," Flash says. "You need it more than I do. Besides, I know this terrain better. I know where to listen and what to listen for."

"Leave her to stand watch so she can stab us in our backs while we sleep?" Yuri says. "There's no way I'm going for that."

"Then Price and I can both stand watch," Flash says, "if that will keep you from wetting your drawers."

"Well, Yuri," Price asks, clearly fed up with the attitude coming at him from multiple directions. "What do you say? Fair enough for you?"

"Fine," Yuri says, "but I'll still have one eye open."

Flash snorts and whispers, "Don't put yourself out."

A part of me wants to interject, wants to take Price's place keeping watch so I can talk with Flash, but Price gives me a knowing look and shakes his head. I can imagine just what he wants to say. "Right now we need to be cautious and focused. You're still recovering your strength from your injury and you need the rest," he would say, and if I argued, he would only say, "Get some rest, son."

I lay down to make myself comfortable not long after Yuri does, Flash staring at me with the same look as Price all the while. She tries to give me another smile before I close my eyes, one that seems hopelessly distorted by her scars. Just before I fall asleep, I search myself for the connection between us, delving deep down to see if any trace of it is still there. Even as I drift off, I can't be certain. My relief lingers, but only just. I push the ambiguous feeling away and hold on to one thing and one thing only.

Flash is alive. After everything we've been through, after everything we've suffered, and against all odds, Flash is still alive. She's back with us, back where she belongs, back with Task Force 141.


	13. Flesh Wounds

"_It is the false shame of fools to try to conceal wounds that have not healed." –Horace_

**[October 5****th**** – 17:24:01]**

**[John Price]**

**[Sherbro, Sierra Leone]**

She fiddles less now. Or maybe it's that she fiddles more. She plays with her fingers or chews on her cheeks when she's nervous, but she must know she does that. She must be comfortable doing it around people she knows. She must understand that we can perceive her nervousness when she shows it. Body language is, after all, a social act. It's designed so other creatures can pick up on one's emotions. We've evolved so that we pick up on those emotions. She fiddles less now, which speaks not that she's comfortable or free of anxiety but that she has more anxiety than she can express. Either that or that she has something to hide.

"You're staring, Price," she says to me from her spot by the entrance. She takes a long drag of her cigarette and puffs out a cloud of smoke just as slowly. "Fixing for a smoke that badly?" I scoff, but she pulls out another cigarette and tosses it to me anyway along with a lighter. "I know you're more of a cigar man," she says, "but that's all I've got."

"You really should get some rest too," I say. I grab the cig and stick it in my mouth. I chew on it a bit before I light the thing, then I toss the lighter back to her.

"Are the scars really that bad," she asks.

"Hey," I say, "we've all got scars."

"You're right," she says. "Mine is on my face. Yours is that god damn hat you always brush your fist against when you're uncomfortable."

See what I mean? Body language. I look down at the hat in my hands and grunt. I stick it back on my head and take a seat next to her. "I don't think the scars on your face are the ones that are bothering you."

"What's the story behind that hat anyway?"

I smile. "None of your goddamned business."

She smiles and laughs. "I knew there was a reason I missed you too," she says. "You're the only other person who gets it."

"You mean who gets what it's like being trapped with the enemy," I say. "Yeah, I get it. Only I was a prisoner."

"I was a prisoner too," she says.

"I know," I say. "But you had it so much worse than I did."

"I don't know about that. You spent, what, two or three years in that gulag?"

I take the cigarette out of my mouth and tap the long line of growing ash onto the floor. "Maximum security. Three meals a day. A bed. Whereas you spent three months basically with a gun to your head."

"Well," she says, "they didn't hold it to my head all the time." She blows out a long cloud of smoke. "Actually, it was so much simpler than that. I thought I was pulling the wool over their eyes by doing everything they wanted. It was all my choice."

"No," I say. "When they leave you with no other choice, that's no choice at all. Like what I did to you on your last mission with us."

"Still hung up on that? You guys think I'm dead for three months, and you're worried about something that happened _before_ all of that?" She slips her cigarette back between her lips and pats me on the shoulder. "I should be thanking you for that," she says.

Her body language is till stagnant—no cheek-chewing, no fiddling. What is it she's hiding? Or is she serious? "Why thank me for that," I ask.

"I don't know if I would have had the nerve to do everything I've had to do since then," she says, "if you hadn't put a decision like that on my shoulders. Who knows? Maybe that was the experience that sealed the deal. Maybe that was the one that made me finally able to make the hard decisions."

I chuckle. "I thought you said doing everything the enemy wanted was an easy decision."

"It was," she says. "Shooting Archer was the hard decision."

I turn to face her fully, getting a complete view of her maimed face for the first time. Somehow it makes me respect her more. "What do you mean?" I ask.

"Another one of the enemy's ploys," she says. "The bullet ended up being a blank, but I was ready to shoot him, ready to kill him if it meant they would trust me." She throws her cigarette to the ground and snuffs it out with her shoe. "And all of this ended up being for nothing. I hope they didn't decide to kill him anyway."

"The one-four-one members are hard bastards," I say. "I'm sure he'll make it."

"Good. At least one of us is," she says as she leans back.

"You really want to know about the hat?"

"It'll make for a good way to pass the time."

"Belonged to an old friend of mine," I say. "Went MIA on an undercover op in Russia years ago. He was a real straight arrow. Wouldn't kill civvies under any circumstances, never got involved in any friendly fire, didn't even like torturing hostages to get information out of them."

"How exactly did he get information out of them, then?"

"He tried to appeal to their good nature," I say. "Or maybe he just thought he could talk them to death instead. I don't know. Whatever he did never bloody worked. I always told him he'd end up married to the enemy one day if he kept chatting them up like that. Seemed fitting when he went MIA."

"You mean you think he defected?"

"Wouldn't surprise me if he did."

"None of that story is true, is it?" she asks.

"Nah," I say. "Makes for a good story, though, doesn't it? My point is, better that he dies in the line of duty than because of you. At least one of you is standing here today, so it wasn't all for nothing."

"You don't need to make a point with me, Price," she says. "I got over it a long time ago. There's nothing I can do to change it now." She looks over to Soap and says, "I doubt MacTavish will be as forgiving as you are, though. Like I said, I was one-hundred percent ready to kill him."

"The world is on fire," I say. "The rules have changed. This is the way things are."

"You're right about that," she says. She chews on her cheeks.

"You've changed," I say. "Is that what you were hiding?"

"People change," she says. "There's no point in hiding."

"But you don't think Soap will understand that."

She looks at me for a few seconds before saying, "You know he won't."

"What do you intend to do about it?"

"Nothing. The only thing I'm focused on right now is ending Makarov," she says.

"Then when it comes time to make the hard decisions," I say, "I can count on you?"

"There may not be very many people left in this world that you can trust, Price," she says. "But you can always trust me."

"Then get ready to move," I say. "We need to scout ahead. Wake Yuri."

The two of us head over to Yuri and Soap and shake them awake. They're up quickly and without a sound. Yuri scowls at the sight of Flash above him, but he manages not to pull a knife on her. Soap does a quick check of his equipment before he straps his weapon around him and says, "Is it time to move?"

"Yeah," I say. "It should be dark outside by now. Everyone gear up and get ready to head for the churchyard. Flash, can you give us the lowdown on their patrols?"

"Roger that," she says. "They don't spend much time outside of the buildings at night. Most of them group up in multi-level homes for good vantage points. You've seen the structures out there. They never go for the ones that are falling apart if they can help it. Collapsing houses during shuteye is bad for business. When the shipment was here, they usually had two groups of two or three men to each patrol, but now that it's moved on, I'm betting they'll downsize them. Maybe two men to a patrol. No one mans the .50 cals or the mortars at night, so we shouldn't have to worry about any heavy firepower."

"Got it," Soap says. "Which way to the churchyard, then?"

"Back the way we came for about forty meters," she says, "and then we should veer off to the right. The ground is softer that way. We should be able to move between the houses and close to the walls without being noticed. There's a sniper's perch on the way that has a direct line of sight to the churchyard. We can move in on him without being seen, but we'll need to take him out before we move forward."

"Roger that," I say. "Soap, you'll handle the sniper."

"Copy," Soap says.

"If someone can provide overwatch from that perch, I can scout ahead into the churchyard and clear the way," Flash says.

"No way," Soap says. "We should all move to the exfil point together."

"One person under the cover of darkness is harder to spot that four," I say. "Flash, is there some place you can set up overwatch when you get there to clear the way for us?"

"If I can get into the bell tower, I'll have a 360 degree field of view around the church," she says.

"Then do it," I say.

"Roger," she says. "Once I'm there, you should make your way through the houses along the sides. You'll probably run into a unit or two if you go that way, but you should be able to take them out before they can alert others, and it reduces your chances of being seen by one of the other patrols."

"On the side it is," I say. "Any last minute things we need to know about."

"Just one thing," Flash says.

"What?"

She smiles and says, "They take the dogs to the churchyard to shit, so watch where you step."

Soap and I laugh as Soap says, "Just like old times."

Yuri holds back a laugh with a scowl, and Flash says, "Chto ne tak?"

Yuri scoffs and says, "Nothing is wrong. By the way, your Russian is terrible."

"Funny," she says. "I was just about to tell you that you speak English pretty well."

For some reason, Yuri smiles at this. "Let's get the hell out of here," he says.

We all nod in agreement as Flash says, "I couldn't agree more."

Flash opens up the wall and steps out before the rest of us, setting her feet gently against the pavement below her. She looks left and then moves to the right. A few seconds pass before she whispers into the coms: "Move up."

Soap heads up first with Yuri right behind him while I bring up the rear. I don't bother closing the wall behind me. If any of us have to see this place again in a hundred years, it'll be too goddamn soon. For Flash most of all. We meet her at the end of the drain pipe as she looks over her shoulder to the right. Soap kneels down next to her and sets his sights on the left side. They both give the all clear and I give the order to move up. We head out of the storm pipe in a single file line and book it to the nearby house.

"Stay close to the walls," Flash says. "When we hit that road up ahead, we go right."

Flash leads the way, staying close to the ground and as close to the wall as she can. The path leads us slightly uphill. As we near the road, I can feel the dirt below us grow soft. Our footfalls go from quiet to nonexistent when we reach our first checkpoint. Flash stops us at the road and checks the tire tracks on the road. "Doesn't look like anyone has driven through here for a while," she says.

"That's probably because we blew up most of their trucks," Yuri says.

Flash laughs at this and says, "Move up." We follow her to the right and start moving up the road close to the houses on the right side. When the road starts curving in the direction of the churchyard, Flash ducks into one of the side houses. We follow her up the stairs and to a window. She gestures out the window to the sniper perch maybe fifty meters away from us, a house stacked at two stories with the perch on the roof. There are walls on our side of the perch, but we can see the tip of the guard's gun moving back and forth.

"There's usually only one person there," Flash whispers. "If we stick close to the houses, he won't see us."

"Copy that," I say. "Soap, lead the way. We'll cover you."

Soap nods and takes point. We head back down the stairs and follow behind him. He slows down the pace as we get closer to the perch. When we get directly below it, we stop. Soap motions at the door and then points at me. I nod, and move up behind him. We clear the first floor room by room. When we hit the second floor, I let Soap move on ahead to the stairs while I finish searching the remaining rooms. "Clear," I whisper into the coms.

Seconds later, I hear Soap. "The sniper is down. I've got eyes on the churchyard. No hostiles in sight."

"Flash, move up," I say as I head up the stairs to join Soap.

"Roger that," she says through the coms.

When I hit the roof, Soap says, "I've got you in my sights, Flash. You've still got a straight shot."

"She's changed, you know," I say to him.

"What are you talking about, old man," Soap whispers to me.

"Flash isn't the same person who joined the one-four-one," I say. "She's changed. Think you can keep up?"

"Flash, patrol coming toward you, two o'clock. Two men. They've got a dog with 'em," Soap says. "Can you find cover?"

"Too late. Get the dog," Flash says. Soap fires not a second later. A few seconds after that, Flash says, "Tangos down."

"You're clear," Soap says. "Keep moving."

"I'm at the church," Flash says. "Moving in."

"She's changed, Soap."

"I heard you the first time, old man," Soap says as he starts heading back down the stairs. "Why do you want to talk about this now?"

"We just got her back," I say. "I'm worried that you'll be too afraid to lose her again. She's changed, the same way you did after Imran Zakhaev. Just remember that."

"Church is clear," Flash says. "I'm in the bell tower and I've got sights on the churchyard. How's our timeline?"

"Nikolai should be in the area in less than ten minutes. Once we're all at the church, I'll give him my go ahead," I say.

"Well, you'd better hurry up," Flash says. "Who knows how much time we have before someone notices that patrol has gone missing."

"You heard her. Move up," I say. Yuri takes point while I take the rear again. We continue to stay close to the buildings. Eventually we come up on Flash's tangos and the dog tucked away in a corner where no one can see them from afar. The churchyard is about ten meters away from us at that point. I signal for the others to stop and say, "Flash, we're going up the right. Do you see anyone?"

"No, you're clear," she says.

"Move up," I say.

We head for the line of houses on the right and stick close the wall again. We make to change directions once we're in line with the church, but Flash stops us. "Wait, wait, wait," she says. "Tango on the balcony directly above you. Looks like he's just stepping out for a smoke."

"We'll wait until he goes back inside," I say. "Keep your head low, Flash."

"Copy that," she says.

We stand there under the cover of darkness for about three minutes. A voice comes into the coms then, and not Flash's. "Price, I am in the area ready for exfil whenever you are," the voice says.

"God damn, it's good to hear your voice, Nikolai," Flash says through the radio.

"I almost didn't believe it when Price told me you are alive," Nikolai says.

"I had trouble believing it for a while too," she says. "Our late-night smoker looks like he's headed back inside." As soon as she finishes her sentence, I see a cigarette butt drift to the ground in front of us. "He's gone. You're clear."

"Copy that," I say. "Nikolai, move in. We'll meet you at the back of the church."

"Roger," Nikolai says.

The three of us move forward and step into the front doors of the church. Flash meets us at the bottom of the slim staircase on the side of the church and says, "So far so good. Looks like Nikolai should be able to get here without any problems, but we're bound to get a little bit of resistance by the time he lands."

"He comes in, we get out," Yuri says. "Let's keep the window small."

"I agree," Price says. "Soap, Flash, set up some explosives by the entrance, just in case. We won't give them the chance to get into our window."

"Way ahead of you," Flash says, her hands already full with C4 and a detonator. Soap pulls out his own C4 and the two of them plant some on either side of the door. They come back and join us seconds later and we all head to the back door.

Right on time, Nikolai says, "Coming in." The sound of the helo echoes into the church hall less than a second later, along with some distant shouting.

"That's our cue," Flash says.

"Setting down," Nikolai yells.

"Let's move," Soap shouts.

He leads the way out the back doors and into the chopper with Yuri and Flash following right behind him. I climb in right after them and swing around, ready to shoot anyone who causes problems. "Nikolai," I yell, "all bodies in. Let's go."

"Copy," Nikolai says, and the chopper lifts into the air. After a few seconds, stray bullets spray in our direction and there's a lot of shouting and barking, but no one is close enough to stop us at this point. I take a seat across from Yuri and next to Flash.

"Flash, you're wounded," I hear Soap say. I glance over at her to see the bullet graze on her knee.

"Relax," Flash says. "It's just a flesh wound." She brushes a thumb across her cheek as if to scratch a phantom itch in the scarred skin on her face. Then she holds the detonator out in front of her and presses the button.

The sound of the explosions sends both Yuri and Soap's eyes out of the chopper and down to the church below us, pieces of it collapsing, the bell tower shifting and falling to the ground and debris flies out in pieces all around it. "I thought that was plan B," Soap says.

"Payback," Flash says with a smile. "A little present for the good times we've shared since I've been here."

Soap glances over at me with wide eyes and doesn't have to speak for me to know what he wants to say. I hum and shake my head slightly. Soap blinks away his surprise and looks back to Flash, who's still smiling and watching the dust and debris settle around the church entrance. "You seem happy," Soap mumbles to her.

"Happy to get the hell out of here," Flash says. She looks at Soap. "More than you know," she adds. "By the way, you have shit on your shoe."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Aw. Flash and Price get a chance to really talk to each other pretty much for the first time since they've met.

I'm really just going to stop making promises I can't keep. I'm in my senior year of college right now, so I'm terribly busy with schoolwork. As always, I'm going to try and update as often as I can, but progress has been slow lately, so I won't be able to meet a specific timeline. I'll do my best, though.

Last but not least, let me just say that's it's been almost a year now since I started writing Flash's story. Holy cow, time flies.

As always, thanks for reading. See you in the next chapter!

Cheers~

HK


	14. I Stand Alone

"_I listen with attention to the judgment of all men; but so far as I can remember, I have followed none but my own." –Michel de Montaigne_

**[October 7****th**** – 9:03:00]**

**[Elaine "Flash" Henderson]**

**[Bamako, Mali]**

The walls are clean. White. Blank. Infinite. There are no windows, no doors. No way in and no way out. The guard is alone and fully armed. He has bright blue eyes and a scar just offset from the center of his forehead. There's blood all over his face and soaking through his balaclava, but he doesn't care. He smiles with teeth as white as the room. They're mostly straight, but he has one snaggletooth in the front of his mouth. Behind it, his tongue licks the back of his teeth.

The infinite white walls become a box closing in around me. I can't see my boundaries, but they crush me until I can't move. The guard just smiles, smiles and licks his teeth. AK raised, he chuckles and closes in on me. He snickers as he pulls the trigger once, twice, thrice. His weapon only clicks, but my heart jumps with each and every sound. He keeps snickering, keeps pulling the trigger until the barrel of the gun is up against my forehead. "Pow," he says, and the barrel turns hot, but no bullet comes out.

I try to fight back, but my limbs won't move. It's like I'm back in the Middle East all over again, people dying around me, people screaming and shouting, shadows looking down on me and calling my name, but I can't move. The guard laughs at my effort and throws his AK to the ground. He circles around me like a hawk, brushes his fingers over me in passing. My shoulder. My hips.

The guard pushes me to my knees and I struggle. I try to move, to run, to scream. Nothing works, not my legs or my arms, not my voice, and the guard just keeps laughing. Laughing and laughing as he pulls down my pants and takes me from behind. The white walls keep closing in until I'm exhausted and raw, until the guard moans and laughs at the same time then pushes me down the rest of the way. He circles me again, steps in front of me, laughs. He grabs my hair and pulls my face up to his.

"Afraid?" he says. He chuckles again. "Are you afraid?" he asks again. I try to move again, try to speak, but my body is like a shell. He only snickers at my suffering. "Tell me, do you miss it?"

Miss what, I think to myself.

"The game," he says. "Do you miss it?"

Fuck you, I think.

He just laughs again. And he keeps laughing, laughs over and over until my ears ring. No matter how hard I try, my voice won't work, my body is broken. He kicks me, turns my body over until he can dig his heel into my stomach, and the wound opens up. The scar disappears, and there's only blood.

He laughs. "Are you afraid?" he asks. He takes his balaclava from his head and throws it down at me, and he's no longer the guard, but Alexi. He sneers down at me, laughs, and digs his heel deeper. "Are you afraid," he says.

When I wake up, the only thing that's real is the fast beating of my own heart, the smell of cigar smoke, and the crick in my back. I lean forward and try to control my breathing, clearing my throat once just to make sure my voice works. I wipe my face to loosen myself up but get only a palm-full of sweat out of the action. My heart seems to beat faster, so fast that I can feel it in my throat. I stand and cross the room to the sink, lean over, and dry heave twice. I take a deep breathe of the smoke instead and spit, and only then does my heart start to slow down. I stand there in front of the sink and take deep breaths until I don't feel sick anymore.

"Should I call a doctor," Price says from behind me. When I turn to look at him, he's leaning back in his chair and sucking on a cigar on one side of his mouth while blowing smoke out the other side.

"I'm fine," I say. "Just a dream."

"Where I come from, we don't call those dreams," he says.

"Where I come from we keep our noses out of other people's business," I say.

He laughs so that smoke comes out of his nostrils. He says, "Maybe next time you shouldn't sleep in the kitchen."

"You slept in the kitchen," MacTavish asks as he enters the room.

"Dozed off in her chair while waiting for the coffee," Price says.

"What coffee?" MacTavish asks as he looks to the empty coffee pot shoved in a corner behind a stack of files.

"I drank it," Price says. He stares at me while he puffs like a chimney. His moustache twitches.

"What's the word on your ace in the hole?" MacTavish asks.

"I got a message through," Price says, "but I haven't heard back yet. Now we wait."

"Even though we should be out there bringing the fight to Makarov," I say. I turn back toward the sink and study the sun rays making their way through the boarded up window.

"_You_ should be resting up," Price says. "We all should. You never know when we'll get the breathing room again."

"I don't even know what breathing room is anymore," I say.

Price chuckles. "I noticed," he says.

MacTavish comes up beside me and starts to set his hand on my shoulder. Only his fingertips touch down before I swipe my arm away and head back to my seat at the table. I take an unfinished cigarette from the ashtray in the center and light it with Price's matches. "Who is your ace in the hole anyway?" I ask Price.

"My old CO," he says. "He owes me a favor."

"Is there anyone who doesn't," I ask.

"I don't think Yuri has made my list yet," he says.

"So," I say, "what's happened since I've been behind enemy lines anyway?"

"A lot," MacTavish says. "Not long after we split up, the Americans pushed the Russians off of U.S. soil, for one. Brought the fight to Europe. The fight's been a stalemate pretty much ever since. Then three days ago... The Russian president is missing."

"What do you mean 'missing?'"

"His plane crashed on its way to Hamburg," Price says.

"You think Makarov was behind it?" I ask.

"Without a doubt," Price says. "The president was on his way to a peace summit."

"And that's the last thing Makarov wants," I say.

"If we find him, though," MacTavish says, "this war is basically over."

"If we find him alive," I say. "I don't know about you, but I intend to put a bullet in Makarov's head whether we find the Russian president or not."

"We need to find him first," Price says. "One thing at a time." He snuffs his cigar in the ashtray and heads for the door. "I'm going to see what's happening with current events. If I hear from Baseplate, I'll let you know."

My cigarette hits its end the moment Price walks out the door, and only seconds later MacTavish says, "Can we talk?"

"Only if you have another cigarette," I tell him.

He pulls one out of his pants pocket and hands it to me as he says, "You smoke more than you used to." I help myself to another of Price's matches.

"What did you want to talk about?"

"You've been through hell," he says as he takes a seat next to me. "We all have. I just want to make sure you're okay."

"Could be worse," I say. "But not much."

"Yeah," he says. "I get that. It'll be a hell of a lot better once Makarov's dead."

Silence hangs between us until I finish my cigarette. MacTavish pulls his pack out of his pocket and offers it to me again. I stare at it for a moment and bite my cheeks. Then I take another and get to work on it. MacTavish sighs like the whole thing was just a test. Instead of putting the pack back in his pocket, he throws it on the table, closer to me than to him.

"You were right," he says. "Nothing is the same anymore, is it?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Price keeps telling me you've changed," MacTavish says.

"And you're worried because I, what, took another cigarette when you didn't want me to?"

"Just tell me if things are different," he says.

"Things change, John," I say. "That's the way the world works. Are you asking me to give you a play by play on everything that changes from day to day?"

"You know that's not what I'm asking," he says.

"Then what are you asking?"

"Stop skirting the issue. You know exactly what I'm talking about."

"Sorry, but I don't."

"Have things between us changed?"

"You keep using that word," I say. I drop my cigarette when I slam my elbow on the table and hurry to pick it back up. "Things. Things. What things?"

MacTavish doesn't answer me, only stares.

I take one final drag of my cigarette to quell the quivering in my voice. I stand up and turn around so I don't have to look him in the eyes. "Yes. No. I don't know," I say.

"Did you mean what you said the other night," he asks.

"Yes," I say. "Yes, I meant it. Every word. I just… So much has happened. First Worm, and then Ghost and Roach. Hell, even Meat and Royce before them."

It isn't until I hear MacTavish stand from his chair that I realize I'm on the verge of tears. They teeter on the edge of my eyelids, waiting for that one thing that will push them over the edge. Then I feel MacTavish's hand touch my shoulder, and the tears are gone. I turn and push his hand away from me. "Stop," I say. "I just need time."

"Alright," he says, and from the way he furrows one brow I can tell that he means it. "I can give you that."

"Hope I'm not interrupting something," Price says suddenly from the doorway. "The two of you should see this."

"On our way," MacTavish says, and he doesn't let his stare linger. Dutifully, he turns and heads through the door to the next room. I follow behind him.

"Everything alright?" Price asks when I pass him in the doorway.

"Why do you keep interfering?" I ask.

"You said it yourself," he says. "I know what it's like. After what you've been through, it's good to have allies to lean on."

"If I plan to lean on anyone, I'll be sure to let you know first," I say. "Now stop asking me questions."

"Fair enough," he says, and he follows me through the door.

In the next room, Nikolai is seated in front of a small TV set. Yuri is standing beside it with a hand on one of the antennae. MacTavish crouches beside Nikolai while Price and I stand behind them and focus our attention to the news program. I save MacTavish the trouble and ask the obvious question. "What's going on?"

The news program answers me with staggering death counts and tentative reports on some kind of bioweapon. They show what limited footage of the aftermath they're allowed. Current events, Price had said. This far from London, this is as current as it gets with the incident happening only yesterday.

"The package," MacTavish says.

"There's a good chance of that, yeah," Price says. "In just a few hours, Makarov turned a city into a cemetery."

"Fuck," I say.

"You've should've look to see what it was," Yuri says.

"What was I supposed to do? Beat down an entire village of mercenaries by myself just to look at a package?" I ask.

Yuri adjusts the antennae in silence for a moment, and then he says, "I see your point."

"I guess Volk isn't just our lead to Makarov anymore, not if he was responsible for this weapon," MacTavish says.

"You got that right," Price says. "A lot of people are going to be calling out for his head soon."

"Then we should deliver," I say. "Along with Makarov's."

"I guess it's time to contact Baseplate," Price says.

"What?" MacTavish says. "I thought you already tried, old man."

"I put it off," Price says. "We needed the R and R, but now we don't have much of a choice."

"There's going to be a lot of traffic," I say. "Think you'll be able to get through to him?"

"He won't have much of a choice," Price says. "Be ready to move at any time."

"Roger that," I say.

"Good," Price says. "And that means _you_ need to get some sleep. I don't want to see anyone dozing off during a mission."

"Oh, please," I say.

"Just do it."

"Fine."

"That goes for everyone," Price says.

MacTavish glances at me but says nothing and takes point up the stairs to the bunks. Yuri takes a seat in his and starts checking all of his gear. MacTavish does the same, sparing me a stare as I head to my newly-claimed bunk and pick at my own gear. "Didn't Price say you should get some rest?" MacTavish asks.

"He also said we need to be ready to move at any time," I say.

"You checked your gear three times before you went to be last night," MacTavish says.

"What are you, my mother? Stop worrying."

"This isn't about worrying," MacTavish says. I can feel Yuri start to stare at us right then. "I said I'd give you time, remember? This is about a potential mission going sour because you aren't taking care of yourself. How long did you sleep last night?"

"For fuck's sake, John, I'm fine," I start.

"Just do what Price said," Yuri says. "Remember it's _our_ asses on the line if you don't have our backs."

"Fine, whatever," I say as I set my things back down. MacTavish and Yuri both turn their gazes from me as I lay back on my bunk.

Despite the fact that it's more comfortable than anything I've sleep on in weeks, my chest feels tight when I lay down. When I see the white ceiling above me, it's like I can't breathe anymore. I think of the dream and, in turn, everything that's happened since the safe house. It's the same feeling I felt last night when I laid down in this bed, the same thing that kept me up half the night until I finally got up and went down to the kitchen. I try to breathe my way through the feeling, try to focus on sleep. I sense myself doze off for a few seconds, but I still see only white. My mind wanders to my dream, and I wake up again.

I sit up and say, "Forget it." Both Yuri and MacTavish look up from checking their gear, a testament to the very few minutes, if that, that I've been laying down. Neither one of them says a thing as I stand and leave the room again. I head back down to the kitchen where I see Price, who has cleared a space on the table for his things.

"I thought I told you," Price starts.

"Save it," I say as I sit across from him.

He stops midway through setting up his things and sits back with an unlit cigar in his mouth. He stares at me but says nothing.

I shrug at him. "I can't sleep."

"Evidently," he says.

"Fine," I say. "I give in. I feel trapped. It's like I'm supposed to feel safe again. I'm supposed to start relying on people. Everyone keeps trying to worry about me—except for Yuri, thank Christ. I'm among comrades, I'm in a safe place, I can stop sleeping with one eye open for the first time in weeks, but I can't. I keep thinking of when I was alone, and it scares the hell out me. At the same time…"

"It feels safer," Price says.

"Yes."

Price continues setting up his gear and says, "I'm not going to sugar coat this for you. That feeling's not going to go away."

"Yeah, thanks for that."

"You can rely on us for whatever you need," Price says. "We're all counting on each other here. But at the end of the day people look to themselves for their answers. That's always been true. You just hate the fact that you feel like you can't trust any of us."

"Having nightmares about every shit thing that's happened to me in the past few weeks is one hell of a response," I say. "And if I didn't trust all of you, I wouldn't be here."

"Not that kind of trust," Price says. "You may trust us with your life, but you don't trust us to understand what you've gone through. That's what's bothering you."

"So what am I supposed to do? Tell you every little sordid detail?"

"The only thing you can do," Price says. "Figure it out on your own. I can't tell you how to solve this, Flash, because, at the end of the day, it's your own opinion that matters."

"Wow," I say. "You say all of that and you still didn't really tell me a damn thing. What happened to 'it's good to have allies to lean on?'"

"You got something off your chest," Price says.

"So?"

"So, didn't it help? I've got work to do. Go get some sleep."

"You said I need to figure this out for myself," I say.

"And?"

"Do me a favor and stop telling me what to do," I say. "If I'm gonna figure this out, then I need that."

Price chews on the end of his cigar a little bit before he smirks. "I can respect that," he says. "You still need the rest."

"I know," I say with a sigh. "And you're right. Venting did help. A little. Even if you were an asshole about it."

"I said you can lean on your allies," Price says. "That doesn't mean I'm here to hold your hand."

"Somehow that's comforting," I say.

Price snickers under his breath. "Get out of here," he says.

"Roger that," I say.

When I go back up to the bunks, MacTavish and Yuri are still checking all of their gear. Yuri doesn't give me a second glance, but MacTavish watches me as I cross the room to my bunk. "What were you doing?" he asks.

"Nothing, _Mom_," I say. "Just getting some coffee."

"Coffee," he repeats. "If we end up taking off on a mission here soon, we can't have you running off of caffeine and nothing else."

"Relax," I say. "Price drank it." MacTavish doesn't know what to say to that, so he stares instead. I don't bother giving the situation anymore energy and close my eyes. I try not to think about the white walls, the white dream. I do anyway. I doze off and wake up to a quickening in my chest a few times. I ignore it—or maybe I accept it—until I drift completely into sleep. The nightmares come back, just like always. But I sleep. And that's a start.


	15. Return to Sender

"_O.C., we've got a caller with a lead on the chemical attacks. Says he'll only speak to you."_

"_Identify yourself."_

"_Mac. It's John."_

"_We put a lot of names on the clock tower this week, lad."_

"_It was Makarov. The bastard slipped through my fingers in Sierra Leone. What does MI6 know?"_

"_You're on everyone's shit-list, John. There's no way I could get you clearance."_

"_Don't give me that! You still owe me for Prypiat. I'm calling it in."_

"_Easy, son. Alright. We've traced the delivery freighter to an outfit in Bosaso, Somalia. It's run by a nasty piece of work named Waraabe. My hands are full with the bleeding at home, so you're on your own. Good hunting."_

**[October 8****th**** – 9:30:23]**

**[John "Soap" MacTavish]**

**[Bosaso, Somalia]**

The first time I killed a man, I had nightmares about the fact that I should have been having nightmares for weeks. I didn't know who the guy was, never even saw his face. And it seemed easy, except for the part of me that knew I was supposed to care. The part of me that knew I was still human. And I never saw the man in my dreams. I only dreamt an intense guilt, but the guilt was always gone when I woke up, and then it was back to work to kill more men I didn't know whose faces I'd never seen. You tell yourself you're doing it for your homeland enough times, and it becomes bearable—kill the enemy soldiers to protect the innocent ones. But make a mistake, kill one civvy, and all justification goes out the window.

I've never killed a civvy. Ever.

In the chopper, Flash and Price lean over the maps almost shoulder-to-shoulder like they're best buds, and, from the way Yuri is shifting his eyes back and forth between them, I can tell I'm not the only one a little out of sorts. Flash follows the path of his eyes and rolls her own, then glances at me and points down at the maps showing the docks where Waraabe's base is.

"What's the security look like?" I ask.

Price shakes his head. "Strictly second division. Local triggermen guard the compound."

"We'll stick out like bollocks on a bulldog," I say. "Stealth's not an option."

"Then we'll just have to kick in the front door," Price says.

"Any chance of civvies?" I ask.

Flash snorts and her shoulders rock with a sense of laughter. "This isn't like Rojas' operation in the favelas," she says. "There won't be any civvies running around here. You remember Kwame's facility—dedicated to dealership. Civilians would only be dead weight."

"We can't say that for sure," I start, but Price heads me off.

"Easy, now," he says. He glances at Flash and tips his head. "No way of knowing for sure. Limit fire to armed only."

"Roger that," Flash says. Yuri nods too.

Nikolai drops us off alongside the beach about ten clicks away from Waraabe's base where a few of his loyalists readied a jeep for us. Yuri, Flash, and I climb out of the chopper while Price says a few more words to Nikolai before he waves him off. Flash starts climbing into the back of the jeep and pauses midway through to look at the sandstorm blocking the horizon. "That's why I miss having a full team," she says. "Coordination was so much better."

"It's not like we could have planned for this," I say.

"No shit," Flash says. "I just hope this doesn't go as badly as our last mission with sandstorm interference. Price, our communications could go bad."

Price hops into the driver's seat and motions for the rest of us to get in. He starts the jeep and hits the gas without waiting to make sure we're all in. "Tell me something I don't know," Price says after a few seconds.

"It's moving in fast," I say. "We only have one shot at this."

We drive for a few minutes before another jeep joins the party, along with Nikolai in his Hind above us. "Price," Flash says with a whistle, "you sure know how to move in with style."

"Nikolai pulled out the stops for this," Price says. "Got us as many loyalists as he could."

"No way Waraabe is going to get away from us," Yuri says from the back seat.

The base comes into view just a couple of minutes later, and even with just those few minutes the sandstorm seems to get closer. Flash seems to have the same thought. "I hate the desert," she says.

A few seconds after, Price says, "Bravo Team, take point through the gate!" The other jeep comes up on our left side and pulls in front of us, sliding from the sand and onto the road.

"Nikolai, soften 'em up," I say.

"Missiles away," Nikolai says through the coms. Two missiles sail overhead and blow the gate just before Bravo Team blasts through in their jeep.

Price gives us the order to engage and Flash is the first one with her weapon readied. "Let's make it happen," she says before she fires off the first round. Yuri fires some shots right after her, and, as if the two of them triggered it, the base's alarm goes off and militia start spilling into the fight from all sides. Price is forced to stop the truck and we all jump out and seek cover behind it.

"Waraabe's compound is at the end of the road," Price says, sticking his head out a few times to fire at hostiles. He sticks his head out one last time before he says, "Move," and then he charges out ahead of us. We follow behind, taking out the triggermen approaching from our right.

"MacTavish," Flash shouts. "Cover under the docks."

I glance back at her to see the path of her eyes and look underneath the docks in front of us. Good cover on all sides—keeps our left and front protected while funneling all fire from the right, and the pillars provide good protection. The ceiling overhead would protect us from sniper fire from the nearest building. I nod and shout, "Sweep under the docks."

Not a moment too soon. Two seconds after the last of us slip under the docks and behind pillars, mortar fire starts coming down on us from above. Even in the middle of a battle, Yuri jumps at the chance to comment. "This was a shit idea," he says, sending a death glare in Flash's direction.

"They're targeting us with mortars," Price shouts. "They could bring this whole thing down on top of us."

"Nikolai, we need air support," I say.

Nikolai reacts at a moment's notice and starts firing down on the enemies charging us, but the mortars continue to rain down. "We need to find out where that mortar is coming from," Flash says.

"Yuri, the remote turret," Price says. "Find the source of the mortar fire."

I turn to offer Yuri support, but Flash gets to him first, rolling through the sand from her pillar to his. She taps him on the shoulder twice and says, "I've got your back." Yuri pulls out his remote and kneels down next to her. She glances at me and gives a thumbs-up. I return it.

"Price," I say, turning my attention back to the fight. "We need to get into that building and take down those snipers."

"Copy that," Price says. "Bravo Team, stick with Flash and Yuri." Price holds a thumb- up to Flash and she gives him one back. Then Price waves two fingers at me and points toward the building. I take point, slipping out from under the cover of the docks and going in through the back door.

Just as Price and I enter, two militiamen come barreling down the staircase adjacent to us and head for the front door. Price takes out the one on the left while I handle the right. We do a quick sweep of the first floor and move to the second after it's cleared. There are two snipers poking out of the second-floor windows, which Price and I take out with our knives. After that, we move toward the top floor.

We get there in time to see one of the two men firing an RPG, and through the coms I hear Yuri say, "RPG fire, watch out."

I fire on the hostile immediately, and Price takes out the second man an instant later, just before he fires his own RPG. The two men fall to the ground just as Nikolai says, "That was too close."

"Third floor, clear," I say into the coms as I step up to the window and switch weapons. "Price and I are on overwatch. Bravo Team, move up."

"Price, Soap," Yuri says, "can you see the source of the mortar fire from there?"

Price and I survey the buildings until our eyes fall on the second-floor balcony of a building away from the beach. Price answers Yuri first, and Yuri gives Nikolai direction that puts the source in his line of fire. The culprit gets one more mortar off before Yuri pins him down and obliterates him. The moment Yuri gives the all-clear, Bravo Team sweeps out from under the docks and starts moving away from the beach with Yuri and Flash right with them. With the upper stories clear for now, Price and I head back to the bottom floors and move forward in the buildings.

As Price and I burst through the next doors, I hear Yuri say into the coms, "Looks more like a town than a base."

"Doesn't matter," Flash says. "This place is a lot like that village in Sierra Leone. Everyone here is working for either Volk or Makarov. Maybe both."

"The mission parameters are the same," Price says. "Fire on armed hostiles only. Now stay frosty."

"We've got technicals," Flash yells almost as soon as Price is finished speaking.

Price nods his head toward the windows. We both look out onto the street and fire on two technicals from behind them. Price takes left and I take right, and once they're both out, Price says, "Tangoes down. Keep moving forward."

He leads our way out of the building and back onto the street to join Flash, Yuri, and Bravo Team. By now, the sand from the storm is meandering its way into the base and mixing with all of the smoke of explosions and gunfire. Resistance is heavy up the street, but not as bad as any of us were prepared for. No doubt we have the other loyalist teams attacking from the opposite side of the base to thank for that.

"Target building in sight," I say once we round the corner of the street. In that moment, hostiles emerge from the window ledges above us firing machine guns. Before needing direction, Nikolai provides air support while Yuri pulls out the remote controls again. Flash keeps him covered from enemy fire while other members of Bravo Team trickle up the side of the street. A few minutes go by, and Yuri takes out the machine-gunners and the rest of us move up to the target building.

"Let's do this fast," Flash says. "That sandstorm is getting closer."

"Copy that," Price says with a hint of sardonic laughter in his voice. "Breach and clear. Bravo, seal off the building from the back. And remember: we need Waraabe alive."

Yuri is the first one through the door with Price following right alongside him. Flash and I move in after and cover their backs, double checking all the corners as they move up, shooting any enemies they might have missed. We shoot at nothing but armed hostiles, just as ordered, but some of them leave disturbing images in my head as they fall dead against beds and desks and dining tables. A mercenary base, sure, but also their homes.

"First floor, clear," Price says when we reach the staircase on the far side of the first floor. "Moving up to the second floor."

Bravo gives similar feedback as they move up the building from the balconies and outside staircases. And then they say the magic words: "Possible on Waraabe, second floor."

"Hold position, Bravo," Price says. We hit the top of the stairs and clear the floor room by room until Price says, "Waraabe's office is just ahead." He motions toward a door at the end of the hall and cues us forward with a nod of his head.

We stack up on the door. "All right, weapons tight," Price says. "We need him alive. Gasmasks on."

Flash and I wait for Price and Yuri to put on their gasmasks as we watch their backs, and then we put on our own. Yuri plants the charge on the door, and seconds later it blows. Yuri is the first one through the door, and the rest of us are right behind him. There are a few unarmed men scattered throughout the room along with the armed ones. Mercs or not, we time our shots and aim carefully so that we don't hit them.

And then we see Waraabe bolting for the back door. The shot that hits his leg passes straight through one of the unarmed guys' stomachs, and it comes from Flash. "He's down," she says, and her words are almost muffled by the sound of a body hitting the floor. Price steps forward and motions for the other few unarmed to leave the room. A few members of Bravo subdue them outside the door, just in case, and close the door behind them.

By the time Price steps over to Waraabe, Waraabe is dragging his mangled leg along the ground and sliding up against a wall. Price gives him a kick. Then he holds out his hand for the special delivery from MacMillan. I toss him the gas can from my pack. Price waves it in front of Waraabe.

"Look familiar?" Price says.

"No, no," Waraabe mutters. "Please!"

Price tosses the canister against one of the side walls and fires on it with his handgun, and the green smog starts to fill the room. At about the same time, sweat, snot, and tears pour down Waraabe's face. Price pulls out the spare gasmask he'd planned on, and Waraabe's eyes widen the moment they fall on it.

"Where's Makarov," Price asks. "Tell me and it's yours."

"Our contact was named Volk," Waraabe says. "We never met Makarov."

Flash gives me a sideways glance at this information before she looks back to the interrogation. I step forward and press a foot down on Waraabe's gunshot wound. "Where is Volk," I ask. "Time's running out, mate."

"Paris," Waraabe says. "He oversaw the delivery in Paris."

I give a nod to Price and then head out the back door where Bravo is waiting. Yuri and Flash follow after me while Price stays behind with Waraabe, and we all take off our masks once we're free from the toxic gas. "What happened to 'no firing on civvies,'" I ask Flash.

"Just because he was unarmed doesn't mean he was a civvy," Flash says. "Besides, we couldn't risk Waraabe slipping out of our grasp."

I shrug. "Guess I can't argue with that."

There's a gunshot a second later, and then Price steps out of the room saying, "Nikolai, Waraabe broke. We have what we need. Ready for exfil."

"Almost there," Nikolai says. "The LZ looks clear but that sandstorm is moving in fast."

"We see it," Price says as he leads us out of the building. "Meet you in twenty seconds." Price turns to us and says, "The last thing we need is to get caught in that. Let's move." He takes point up the road toward the LZ.

"You think Waraabe was telling the truth about Volk," I ask.

"He was telling the truth," Price says. "I'd bet Makarov's life on it." He glances at Flash. "Besides, it conducive to Flash's info."

Flash nods. "I'm sure of one thing now," she says. "If there's anyone who _has_ had direct contact with Makarov, it's Volk. We find him, maybe we can get to the mastermind."

"Volk is the answer," Price says. "We'll start…"

Before Price gets the chance to finish, a member of Bravo Team walking right next to him gets taken down by sniper fire. All of us raise our weapons and get low at almost the same time. Price yells for Nikolai to wave off and for us to find cover; I can just imagine Flash criticizing him for wasting his breath. She never says it though. Instead, she says, "They're on the rooftops!" She fires on one at distance and hits—her aim has gotten better.

"Nikolai," Price says. "Change of plan. Head to the secondary LZ!"

"The sandstorm is coming in fast," Nikolai says. "I won't be able to touchdown when it hits."

"Just be there," Price yells. A few more members of Bravo go down while we try to push the enemy ambush back and Yuri gets grazed in the shoulder, but it doesn't take us long to clear them out. Then Price says, "We've got to push to the secondary LZ before the storm hits. Let's move!"

Price takes off ahead of us, and we do our all to keep up. It reminds me of a rush to LZ back in the Ukraine so many years ago, or of Price, Roach, and I booking it to get out of the gulag only a few months past now. But I think mostly of chasing Rojas in Rio when I see Flash keeping up right behind Price. She's faster too. Hell, we all are. Maybe that's what happens when it becomes about something bigger than the job.

We take out a few more waves of hostiles on the way, including another technical that almost does us in. Every one of us dives into cover just before it takes us out. Yuri is the one to put a stop to it, switching to his M203 and blowing the truck, taking the engine, gas tank, and shooter with it in a spectacular explosion that cues our advance.

And then we see the target building where the secondary LZ is located—a building under heavy construction and littered with scaffolding. Maybe more open to attack, but also easier to do a pickup from and harder for the hostiles to ambush us. Tactically sound for the location of a secondary LZ when you're in a tight spot. But Flash has other things in mind when she sees it.

"Please tell me the secondary LZ is not at the top of that building," she says, stopping along the side of our path and lolling her head back to look upward.

"That's the one," Price says. "Nikolai, the LZ is in sight."

"Move fast," Nikolai says. "I don't know how much longer I can fly in this storm." As nearly as Nikolai finishes speaking, a gust of wind pushes over one of the building's walls and kills two hostiles.

"Have I ever told you I hate rickety buildings?" Flash shouts, still stopped on one side of the road.

"Stop fooling around," Price says. "We need to push to the top floor. Let's move."

"You're out of your mind," Flash yells.

Of course. Her mission that went sour in the Middle East; and after that when we teamed up with Sgt. Foley's unit to wipe out some extra trash. Easy to forget when it seems like so long ago, but fears like hers aren't as easy to leave behind. Still, no place for them in a situation like this. "We don't have a choice," I say. "If you want to turn back and take on Waraabe's entire army, be my guest."

Flash sighs and shakes her head at the building. "You owe me for this," she says. "You owe me big time. And I swear, if I get crushed under rubble, I will haunt you until you die."

"Cut the chatter," Price shouts. "Let's go."

We clear the first floor with hostiles hot on our heels. Our trip up to the second floor is colored by the wind blowing around debris and loose construction, none of which even comes close to hitting Flash. Still, she curses with every gust of wind and any time debris crashes against something. Once we clear the second floor, she takes point up to the third and says, "I hate the fucking desert!"

We hit the roof and Price says, "Nikolai, we're at the LZ. Where are you?"

"Almost there," Nikolai says. I would take his word for it myself, but it's impossible to see anything through the sand, and the sound of gunfire and explosions negates any possible sound from Nikolai's chopper. But I do see it eventually, only just barely through the thick cloud of dust. Nikolai pulls away again almost instantly. "The site is too hot! I can't land!"

"Yuri," Price says, "get on the remote turret and thin them out."

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Flash mutters.

All too soon. Nikolai's chopper gets hit by an RPG in almost the exact same moment and starts to spin out of control. "I'm hit, I'm hit," Nikolai shouts.

"He's out of control," Price yells. "We've gotta get off this roof! Go! Use the ropes!"

Price heads for the side of the building first with the last two members of Bravo Team right behind him. Flash tugs at Yuri's vest before she heads for the side herself and drops over the edge on the rope. Yuri takes the same rope as her while I take the one next to him just as Nikolai's chopper sails over our heads in a motion that would have taken all of us out—one fell swoop, as they say.

Price is already shouting into the coms for Nikolai when Yuri and I hit the bottom, but there's no answer from Nikolai's end. Whether it's because of the crash or because of the storm is impossible to say, and, frankly, I'm not sure which thought it worse. "What the bloody hell are we gonna do now," I say.

"Echo Team," Price says into the coms, "Nikolai's bird is down and the sandstorm is on top of us! We need emergency exfil!"

"Roger," Echo replies. "We'll contact you when we get a fix on Nikolai."

Price hops into a run and opens a gate directly in front of us that leads back out to the street. "C'mon, lads," Price says. "We've got to reach Nikolai before Waraabe's men do. Vehicle coming through! Stay low and keep moving."

The vehicle goes straight past without noticing us, probably because of the thick sand. But it works both ways. "I can't see two feet in front of me," I say with an unanticipated cough.

"I feel like I can barely breathe," Flash mutters. "This is their terrain. If we don't get out of here soon, we'll be fish in a barrel."

Following the road, we eventually come upon an intersection where another vehicle and a group of militia are gathering with flashlights to help them see through the storm. Not that it does them much good. The lights are what give away their position to us, and they're dead before they even take notice. Price gives the order to fire, and we eliminate them down to the last man. Then Price takes point and keeps us moving forward.

"We've got to move," Price says. "Echo Team, what's your status?"

"We've located Nikolai's chopper," Echo says. "It's a half-click south of your position."

"Hostiles, right," Flash says barely above a whisper.

"Get down," Price says. The hostiles go right past us without even turning a head and keep moving down the road. One of them shouts something in foreign tongue and a few others respond while readying their weapons.

"They didn't see us," Yuri says.

"They must have found Nikolai," I say.

Price barely waits for me to finish before he gives the order to move out.

"I can see Nikolai's chopper in the distance," I say.

"Along with those hostiles," Flash says. "Price, I suggest we wait for Echo to move in for Nikolai, then flank the enemy."

"Great minds think alike," Price says. "Move up. Keep it quiet and slow."

The sandstorm makes it easy to move in on the hostiles undetected, and, the moment Price gets confirmation that Echo has reached Nikolai, he gives the order the fire. The hostiles never see it coming before they drop dead. However, it's not long before more hostiles start to close in on us. Price orders us to convene at Nikolai's position. Yuri grabs Nikolai while the rest of us hold the hostiles back.

"Where's the convoy," Price asks.

"We've got two vehicles fifty meters to the northwest," Echo Team leader says.

"All right," Price says. "Echo-2, we've got Nikolai. We're heading to your exfil point. Move out."

"Can't see a damn thing," Flash mutters.

I laugh if only because I feel the same way. But if we're as close to Echo's exfil as they say, then I remember where we are just by looking at the maps. "Follow me," I say, and I take point with Price right behind me and Flash covering Yuri's six.

The run to their vehicles is short, and the only obstacle standing between us and them is a small ridge. I slide down first with ease, and then I spot for Yuri and Nikolai's landing. Flash and Price and Echo Team leader cover us once they hit the bottom of the ridge; I help Yuri get Nikolai into one of the trucks, and seconds later the others climb into the trucks after us. Echo-2 practically cheers at our successful extraction, a reaction that puts a smirk on Flash's face at least. But the way she glances out of the jeep, it's hard to say what it is she's smiling about.

"So," I say after taking a few minutes to catch my breath. "If Volk's in Paris, how are we getting there in the middle of a bloody war?"

Price leans forward on his knees and nods his head. "We can't," he says. "But I know who can."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Thanks for your patience! I still have one more potentially busy senior semester of college left, but for now I have the next five weeks to keep up on this. I'll do my best!

Enjoy~

HK


	16. Durak

"_Caller, please authenticate."_

"_Access code: Black Viking. Get me a secure line to asset Metal 0-1."_

"_Price. Thanks for the tip on Kingfish. You should know Uncle Sam's got a kill/capture order on your head."_

"_Tell 'em to join the bloody queue. Makarov's bomb-maker, Volk, is in Paris. We need to act before he bolts, and I can't make the window. You're the only one I trust with this, Sandman."_

"_I'm on it."_

**[October 9****th**** – 10:13:49]**

**[Elaine "Flash" Henderson]**

**[Bamako, Mali]**

Yuri lays down a queen of diamonds. "Now, you try to beat my card," he says. "A higher card of the same suit or a trump card. Remember, the trump is clubs."

"Seriously?" I say. I look at the six cards in my hand—two sevens, a nine, a ten, and two jacks, and none of them belong to the trump suit. "That's a bitch first move, Yuri. I've got nothing."

"Then I can attack you again," he says as he lays down another queen. "I can attack again with any cards that are the same number as those on the table."

"Wait, wait, wait," I say. "You can keep attacking me even if I can't fight back? That doesn't sound fair."

Yuri shrugs and taps his thumb against his deck. "It's not much different from war," he says.

"Then why do they call it attacking?" I say. "They should call it barraging. Or bombardment. Anyway, I guess I have to pass then?"

Yuri nods. "You take the cards on the table. We replenish to six cards, then I can attack again until you can fight back."

"Great," I say. I swipe the cards from the table and add them to my hand. Yuri takes one card from the stack, putting him back at six cards. That's when I notice MacTavish leaning over my shoulder.

"You two are playing cards?" he says.

"Durak," Yuri says. "I'm tired of poker."

I smirk. "After all these years, so am I," I say, thinking back to the late nights in the mess. "Care to join? Durak can be played with more than two people, right?"

Yuri snorts and says, "Then I have to teach the game all over again."

"Suck it up, Yuri," I say. "It's not like you don't have the time."

"That's okay," MacTavish says as he sits down at the table. "I'll just watch."

"Suit yourself," I say. I hold up my cards in his face and smile. "Pun intended."

It doesn't take long for Yuri to show me up. He beats my last string of attacks with all the high trump cards until he has no cards left in his hand. He smiles and says, "That makes you Durak."

"What's Durak?" MacTavish asks.

Yuri opens his mouth to speak, but I beat him to the punch. "It means fool," I say.

MacTavish chortles and says, "I keep forgetting that you took occasion to learn Russian."

"Only enough to get by," I say. "You don't exactly have to worry about Yuri and me slurring out arrays of insults right in front of you."

"That's good," he says with another laugh.

"How about another go?" I ask Yuri. "Maybe I'll have a chance of beating you this time."

"Don't count on it," Yuri says.

"Oh, please," I say. "Half of the game is luck of the draw. Literally."

"Right," Yuri says with a smile. "And the other half is knowing when to play which cards."

"You trying to say something about my tactics?"

"Well," Yuri says, "your battle tactics aren't all that practiced."

"It's easy to say that when you're the one who gets to use all the fancy gadgets."

"When you learn more Russian, maybe I'll let you have a go," he says.

I laugh and turn my head away from Yuri to look at MacTavish. "Want us to deal you in this time?"

"No thanks, I'll pass again," he says.

Yuri shakes his head and deals the two of us in for six cards, and we go at it again and again until we've been playing for about an hour. Of the roughly twenty games we play, Yuri beats me about twelve times. I beat him about five and the rest end in draws. "It's a good thing we weren't gambling for this," Yuri says, "or I would own just about everything you have right now."

"Laugh it up, Yuri," I say. "You have years of experience on me."

"I thought half of this game was the luck of the draw," Yuri says.

"Yeah, well," I say, "let's just say I haven't had the best luck lately either. Another game?"

"No thanks," Yuri says as he cleans up the cards and sets them in a neat stack in the corner of the table. "I can only be around a fool for so many hours of the day."

"Ha, ha, Yuri," I say.

"I'm going to get something to eat and check up with Price to see where we stand," Yuri says. "Might even tune up the mounted gun controls. Never know when we'll need it again."

"Maybe you can program some English into it," I shout to him as he leaves the room. I tap the top of the card deck with my index finger. "Care to play anything, MacTavish?"

"No thanks," he says.

"Come on, seriously? You didn't come up here just to watch us play cards."

MacTavish rubs the stubble on his face. "No, not exactly."

"Then what?"

"I was hoping we could chat for a bit," MacTavish says.

"Chat?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says. "Chat."

"Oh, no," I say. "Here it comes. You want to talk about that civvy I shot in Somalia."

"No, no," MacTavish says. "Well, maybe."

"Spit it out," I say, leaning my head on my hands. "You may as well hammer down now."

MacTavish sighs and says, "I'm not trying to criticize or anything."

"But?"

He looks me in the eyes and says, "No buts."

"Seriously? No 'what were you thinking' or 'how could you do that'?"

"No," MacTavish says. "I mean, those were my thoughts at first, but you were in the right. It had to be done."

"You would have done the same damn thing," I say.

"Exactly," he says. "I'm still trying to get used to the new you. I think that's the problem, but it's a work in progress."

"Everything has changed with this war," I say. "You shouldn't think of it as the new me. A few months ago, sacrificing a civvy to catch a dealer wouldn't have been in the right."

"That's true," MacTavish says. "Desperate times, right?"

"Right," I say. "At this point, catching Makarov is worth almost any price."

MacTavish sits across from me in silence for a few minutes before he leans on his knees and nods his head. "I can accept that," he says.

It doesn't make me feel better when he says it, though. Instead, a knot forms in my chest. MacTavish stands and I reach out a hand to stop him, gripping his pants by the knee. "Wait," I say. He doesn't ask why, only sits back down and listens. But no words come immediately to mind.

"What is it?" he finally says.

"It's just," I say, leaning my face into my hands. "Things have been…"

"Tense?" he says.

I take my hands from my face and nod. "Things with Alexi," I say, but again my thoughts drop off.

MacTavish doesn't press. Instead, he asks, "Who is this Alexi?"

"Alexi Mikhailov," I say. "I don't know what his official position is in Makarov's army. One of Makarov's most trusted, that's for sure." My hands get sweaty when I say it, and I suddenly feel myself biting my cheeks.

MacTavish snorts, probably more to lighten the atmosphere than out of humor, and it works, at least until he speaks again. "I get the feeling you don't like him."

"I hate the bastard," I say. "I mostly ran shipments with him. That's how I met Volk. I'm sure they hoped I'd be useful, but mostly I think Alexi was the one Makarov trusted most to keep an eye on me. Hell of a soldier. Quite the silver tongue, too."

"I don't mean anything by it," MacTavish says, "but it doesn't sound like you hate him that much."

My first instinct is to snap back at MacTavish, but I hold it in and think about his words. "It's complicated," I say. "Alexi was the only thing standing between me and the ultranationalists that wanted me dead. He taught me some Russian. We watched each other's backs during the few missions we went on together. I wouldn't say I trust the bastard, but there had to be _some_ trust there. He saved my life a few times. I hate to say it, but I saved his life a few times too. And then there's…"

MacTavish shakes his head absentmindedly and says, "Please tell me there's a 'but' in here somewhere."

"He made me do a lot of things I wasn't proud of, if that's what you mean," I say. "I've shot more than a few loyalists under him, John. Civilians too. Shot to kill."

"Reason enough to hate him completely," MacTavish says. "Doesn't seem all that complicated to me."

I shake my head and smile sardonically. "If only that were the case."

MacTavish sighs but doesn't say anything, probably in an effort to conceal his disapproval. As much as the idea hurts, I'm also grateful for the chance to speak without upfront judgment.

"I don't regret what I did, joining the enemy for a chance to destroy them," I say. "The call seemed right. Hell, it was right. For all I knew, you guys were dead. I was the best chance of getting close to Makarov. In the end, he pulled one over on me anyway. But I would make the same decision all over again."

"I can understand that," MacTavish says. "You did what you had to."

"I didn't have to kill those civvies. Or those loyalists," I say. "In fact, maybe it would have been better not to, even if it cost my life. Those loyalists were trying to disrupt ultranationalist operations. For all I know, that bio-attack on London might never have happened if not for me."

"It's not like you could have known," MacTavish says.

"So the ends justify the means?" I say with a smile. "I'm not arguing with you. There was no way to predict the outcome of my actions. Anything seemed worth the risk. All that aside, though…"

"'All that aside' what?"

"All that aside—the outcome, the bioterrorism, the loyalists—I didn't have to kill any of those people. It's not like Alexi had a gun to my head. And even if I did fight back, I could have attempted to disable them—incapacitating shots instead of deadly ones, maybe the legs or the arms. I shot to kill every step of the way."

"I'm not sure I understand your point."

"My point is that maybe there is a 'new me,'" I say. "I just wanted you to know that."

MacTavish contemplates this for a good few minutes, then he shakes his head and grins. "You still have a conscience," he says, "or you wouldn't be saying this now."

"Is a conscience enough?" I say.

"You're not worried about what I think," MacTavish says. "You're looking for forgiveness."

I shrug. "Maybe."

"I'm not sure I'm the one to do the forgiving," he says. "But I forgive you, for what it's worth."

"What if this new, darker version of me does it again?"

"I think everyone is darker these days," MacTavish says.

"I'm serious, John," I say. "I want this to go away, this tension between us, but it keeps popping back up like a bad rash."

"I felt like we were moving past it," MacTavish says, "right up until you said that."

"I'm not sure there is a way to move past it," I say. "Not unless I can go back to the old me."

MacTavish's face turns dark in that moment—completely unreadable as he stares down at the table. "We've been through this before," he grumbles. "If you think you can go back to the old you, maybe you really are 'durak.'"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

MacTavish stands. "You think this tension is because I can't accept the new you?" he says. "You're the one who needs to accept it. This line of work changes people. You should know that. Did you think the one who worked in the Marines and the one who joined the one-four-one were the same person? You had already changed. As far as I'm concerned, the only change you shouldn't accept is the one that keeps you from moving forward. I figured that out. It's time you caught on. Come talk to me when you do."

Through all of his harsh words, MacTavish doesn't raise his voice once as he speaks. He leaves when he's done, and the knot in my chest feels bigger, but instead of doing the rational thing and thinking through my anger, thinking about his words, I stand and chase him down the stairs.

"It's easy for you to say, John," I say. "You can accept your own changes because they aren't the product of your enemy."

MacTavish stops midway down the stairs and turns to look at me. "Aren't they," he says, his voice still calm and level. "Imran Zakhaev killed almost my entire unit. He changed me forever. Shepherd changed me forever. Maybe you're just taking away the wrong things from the lessons you learned while you were behind enemy lines."

"Oh, really?"

"Really," MacTavish says, taking another step up the stairs so that only two steps separate us. "You killed civvies and loyalists. Never mind that you did it for the greater good. You took away from that experience that you're capable of killing civvies and loyalists. Maybe what you should have taken away from it is the fact that you didn't want to." He climbs up another step. "You joined the enemy and took away that you're capable of doing evil things rather than the fact that you're willing to sacrifice yourself for others." He takes one last step up so that we're on the same step but he's standing over me. "You tried to save Roach and Ghost and Private West and Meat and Royce and decided that you can't save anybody. Instead of swearing to yourself that next time you'll save everybody. That makes you worse than 'durak.' It makes you a coward."

MacTavish stares me down, but not with a look of anger. Instead, it looks like pity, and it stings worse than the words he just spoke. The knot in my chest moves up to my throat and no words find their way out to retaliate. MacTavish blows air out of his nose and shakes his head, basically the confirmation of his victory. He turns his back and continues down the stairs.

Price calls us in that moment, and MacTavish continues into the kitchen around the makeshift briefing table. I take a few moments on the stairs to compose myself before going the rest of the way down and following MacTavish into the kitchen. When I enter, Price speaks as though nothing is wrong. "This is where we stand," he says, looking down at the table. But from the way he glances up at me and the way Yuri stares, even from Nikolai's shadowed eyes in the corner, I can tell: they heard everything.

Called a coward for everyone to hear. And I didn't even deny it.

Maybe I really am 'durak.'


	17. Eye of the Storm

**[October 10****th**** – 21:36:42]**

**[John Price]**

**[Prague, Czech Republic]**

War changes all things.

Love, a state of mind once so beautiful, can turn to wretchedness—the dead stalk sucking the life from the tree, the infected limb slowly killing the body, the black hole reaping destruction even as it serves to balance the forces of the universe. Hate becomes the sweetest vice—a stinging salve for a festering wound, a bitter drink for the pleasure of the villainous and the virtuous alike, a harmful tool by which to repair the world should all other tools fail.

War can change even the most honorable of men into the dregs of society, the gutter rats, the sadists, the misanthropes. Some become husks, shells of their former selves, living and breathing but acting with the head and not the heart. Even if the body is healthy, the soul decays. Eventually focused ruthlessness and brutal logic take their toll. There's no more room for sympathy, mercy, humanity.

The beautiful places of the world transform into their own purgatories, circles of hell rotting from the scum infesting them—no Virgils to abet us through the darkness, no Beatrices to remind us of the light. Chaos is the only word for it—chaos, and maybe insanity. People become bacteria filling the bloodstream, maybe viruses infecting, and eventually killing, society from the inside out. When we're through, all that's left is the rotting corpse of what used to be. Ugly, beautiful—it doesn't matter because the body is dead. Nothing of what used to be exists underneath. It disappears forever, at least for those who truly see, those who truly know. And maybe the world repairs itself. Eventually.

But not for us.

Such is the state of Prague now. A place full of beautiful buildings from a time long past, a time full of creation and flourishing, but underneath it all here we are, sucking the life from this place. Us or them—it makes no difference. We're all responsible for this armpit of a situation, and the only way to take responsibility for it is to end it. The goal seems clear, and yet—for some of us—the path is beginning to blur.

"You've lost weight," I say to Flash.

We're all just sitting here now, in the very muck we're made of, waiting for the right time, waiting for our plans to come to fruition. We're taking every ace in the hole we have and betting them all on this mission. We know where Makarov will be. All we have to do is take over the city and take him out. _All _we have to do. It seems like a lot. It is a lot, but they aren't odds we haven't faced before. More than that, we don't have a choice. This is the only road left to us now, and we have to succeed at the end of it. Betting it all can have that finality.

But, even though we sit there in silence, Yuri and Soap a couple of meters away from us preparing equipment, Flash and I keeping watch outside of the sewer grates for movement, Flash doesn't hear me. I say it again. "You've lost weight."

"We've all lost weight," she says.

"Fair enough," I say. "But even in just the last few days, you've lost weight."

"There's still no movement outside," she says. "Must mean our preparations are coming along nice and quiet."

"Is everything all right?"

"We're closing in on Makarov," she says. "This is the closest we've been since…" She doesn't finish her sentence, and she doesn't have to. "I should go with you," she says, "instead of with MacTavish and Yuri."

"You think so?"

"I know so," she says. "We split up two and two. I'm not cut out for sniping anyway."

"We don't know what kind of defenses Makarov will have in that building," I say, though I know I'm wasting my breath.

"All the better to have someone in there watching your back," Flash says. "And you can watch mine."

"I wasn't arguing with you," I say. "I just want to make sure you're clear about our chances."

"Crystal," she says. "We've lived through so many life-or-death situations, we're practically living on borrowed time. Our chances of survival don't concern me as long as we succeed." She pulls out a cigarette. "If you ask me, taking control of the city is going to be the hardest part."

"If they succeed," I say. "To tell the truth, the whole uprising is just a distraction so we can get to Makarov. And put that cigarette out."

"I figured as much," she says, flicking her barely-smoked cigarette into the mucky water below us. "It'd be nice if they win, though."

"I hear that."

I peek out the grate, then at my watch. "Is it almost time," she asks.

"It's almost time," I say with the nod of my head. "You clear on what we have to do?"

"You can count on me, Price," she says. "I've got your back."

I nod, and then I head a short ways down the sewer to Yuri and Soap. "It's almost time," I say. Soap looks up at me; Yuri keeps his eyes fixed on his gun in contemplation. "Any last questions before we do this?"

"I still don't think you should go in there alone, old man," Soap says.

"That won't be a problem," I say. "There's been a change of plans. Flash is with me."

Soap doesn't react at first, then he shakes his head and white-knuckles his way through his next words. "Why doesn't that make me feel any better," he says.

"We've got him," I say. "We've finally got him. We can't screw this up."

"We won't," Yuri says with a crooked glance at Soap.

"Then get your gear," I say. "We move in fifteen minutes."

When I turn, Flash is standing right behind me with her arms crossed and her brows in a hard line. She already has all of gear on. She nods to me, and I return the gesture.

And this is what this war has turned us into—we hardly need to speak to each other anymore. Or, should I say, we hardly choose to. Does it not make us into little more than animals? Little more than beasts with a marginal sense of human rationale? We are beasts here, our human emotions, our morals slipping away from us with each word we don't say to each other. Three months ago, I might've said that each of us had a chance of getting out of this forever, living civilian lives. Maybe.

"There's no going back now," I say.

"There never was," Flash says. "How long have you been in this now? You should know that better than any of us."

"For myself, maybe," I say. "Some part of me hoped it would be different for the rest of you."

"Don't start going soft on us now, old man," Soap says.

"It's like they say," Flash says. "'Only the dead have seen the end of war.'"

"Maybe they're right," I say. "But I have no intention of dying today."

"The only one who dies today is Makarov," Yuri says. He steps forward and holds out a hand. I take it, then, as if instinctively, Soap and Flash both place their hands on top. As one last gesture, Soap reaches for the chain under his collar and grips the collection of dog tags in his hand.

"This ends today," Soap says.

We all nod, and then there's nothing more to say.

We hop in the water and head out of the sewers just as the sky starts to darken—from the weather more than the night. Pathetic fallacy, they call it—a terrible storm to reflect the nature of our actions here today. That's what I think of then. Of course, tactically, the chaos of the storm is the perfect time to spring our trap, the perfect tool to muffle or sounds as we move through the water. But otherwise the storm seems a long time coming, like for us it's been here all along, but the world has only just now caught up.

I lead the way. "Keep it quiet now," I say. When we see troops on the boardwalks above us, I give the order to stop.

"They've already taken prisoners," Soap says.

"They've been in Prague for months," Flash says. "I guess they figured they'd crack down since Kingfish is coming."

"They're moving fast," Soap says.

"We need to be faster," I say. "Keep it tight, lads. Use the boats for cover."

As we tear away from the sewers, the smell gets a little better, but not much, and with the storm pouring down on us, all I can picture is a flash flood of shit coming through the spillways taking out everything in its path. When we pass under the docks, I can't imagine how that would be a bad thing. It would take a good bulk of Makarov's force away with it. But without us to pull the trigger, Makarov would still get away.

Gunshots stop all of us before I have to put my hand up and give the order to hold. Above us, they're executing the civilians. A few of the bodies fall into the water on their own. Others are kicked in, spilling over the boardwalks and leaving bits and pieces of ripped clothes snagged on the wooden planks.

"Easy," I say. "Let them pass."

Once they've taken care of the bodies, the Russian soldier on the boardwalks meander away from us until we're free to move again. We head further down the canal and to another sewer opening. We have to pry open the grate before we can get inside. Once we're there, Kamarov is there to greet us.

"What took you so long," he asks. He holds out a hand to pull Yuri out of the sewage while a few of his soldiers help the rest of us.

"Your intel was off, Kamarov," Soap says. "You said this area would be clear."

"I'm sure it was nothing you couldn't handle. Do you know what had to be done to get you this far?" Kamarov says.

"Who cares?" Flash says. "We dealt with it."

"Enough chit-chat," I say. A polite way of telling all of them to stop bickering. "Soap, Yuri, best get on your way. We'll meet you at the rally point."

"Flash, are you sure," Soap starts.

She doesn't let him finish. "It's the best plan," she says. "We'll see you on the other side, yeah?"

"Right," Soap says. He nods at Flash, then at me, and says, "Good luck on your end. Let's go, Yuri."

The two of them head down another path through the sewer while Flash follows Kamarov and me. Kamarov leads us out of the sewers and into a tight backstreet. Then he pulls out a map with our route drawn on it in red. "We'll head this way, through the backstreets," Kamarov says. "Once we hit this main street, we can get to this building where you'll have roof access."

"That's stupid," Flash says. She puts her finger to the map. "That main street is too open. We go that way, they can pick us off from the rooftops. We can keep control of the battlefield if we use this back alley."

"No longer an option," Kamarov says. "A lot of the buildings around here have been demolished during resistance fights. That alley is pile of rubble now."

"Then we'll stick to the main street and go through the buildings if we can," I say. "No sense in letting this end before it even starts. Now, let's not draw any attention to ourselves."

Kamarov takes point leading us through the tight backstreets. There are fewer doors to check back here, so we keep our eyes on the cross-streets and windows. The windows are mostly boarded up, probably from civvies holing up in their houses as soon as the fighting started. Doubtless the houses are empty now, they civvies dragged out to be shot in the street and dumped into the sewers like we saw earlier. The thought of all those bodies collecting in one place—there's going to be a lot of cleanup to do once all this is over.

"Price, you copy," Soap says through the coms.

"Go ahead," I say.

"Lot of movement on the street. Keep your eyes high; there are snipers everywhere."

"We'll keep an eye out," I say. I look to Kamarov and Flash and direct my fingers toward the rooftops.

Kamarov turns us around a corner and right into a dead-stop. Rubble, just like the rubble he was talking about. The second-story wall of one of the buildings beside us has fallen down into the alleyway, likely from bombardment or helicopter fire. "I thought this path was clear," Flash says.

"It was the last time we checked," Kamarov says. "What do you want me to tell you? This city has been part of the battle since day one."

"I know," Flash says. "I know it has. I'm sorry. Is there another way around?"

"There's another backstreet we can take," Kamarov says. "The only way to get to it from here is to cross a main street in two different places. Either that or go back."

"We don't have time to go back," I say. "We'll have to risk it."

"It's probably crawling with patrols," Kamarov says.

Flash looks to me and nods. "We can handle it," she says.

"I agree," I say. "Lead the way, Kamarov."

Kamarov takes us a short way back down the path way took and turns off on a different backstreet. The backstreet only goes on for a few meters before it opens onto the main road. The main road is marked by an abandoned car parked just off the sidewalk. Beyond it I can see the heads of two armed guards patrolling the streets. And there's probably more where they came from.

"How do you plan to cross," Kamarov says.

"Don't say that like you're not going with us," Flash says. "The Art of War."

"What?" Kamarov says.

"Flash, you have a plan?" I say.

"Basic strategy," she says. "'When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away.' The right distraction will get them out of our way without alerting them to our presence."

"What do you suggest?"

"This city is falling apart brick by brick," she says.

"Cause a collapse of our own," I say. "They'll go to investigate, then once they see it was just some collapsing debris, they'll get on with their duties."

"I see," Kamarov says. "A door charge would do the trick. The storm should muffle the sound of the explosion."

"Now more than ever," Flash says in response to a crack of thunder. "I'll head into one of these buildings from the backstreet and look for a good place to set the charge."

"Agreed," I say. "We'll keep an eye on the street."

Only about five minutes pass before we hear from Flash again. "The building is clear," she says, "except for a few bodies. They've really been cleaning house."

"See anything promising?" I say.

"Yeah," she says. "Collapsed roof put some weight on one of the second-story walls. It's practically crumbling apart as we speak."

"You gonna be able to get out of their before the charge goes off?"

"That's the plan." Then she mutters, "Never thought I'd be using my greatest fear as a weapon. I guess there's a first for everything. Okay, the charge is…set. I'm on my way down. Get ready for some noise."

The only noise we hear is the crack of thunder followed by a few bricks hitting the pavement of the street. Then there's a creaking, a few more bricks, and before we know it we hear the sounds of a wounded building crying out across the street. From our position, we can't see the destruction ensuing, but the men patrolling the street look over at it. One of them says something in Russian—I'd stake my life on a curse—and the two of them start trotting over to check out the damage. Seconds later, Flash comes barreling around the corner breathing like she just made the sprint of her life.

"The way is clear," Kamarov says. "Let's move."

Without a moment's pause, we sprint across the street with Kamarov taking the lead. It only takes a few seconds before we reach the other side and duck behind a dumpster that barely fits between the two walls.

"Good work, Flash," I say. "What's our next step, Kamarov?"

"We head down this way," Kamarov says, pointing down the street. "Then we make left and cross one more like that."

"If we run into more patrols," Flash says, "we really should think of another distraction."

"Agreed," I say. "Two incidents like that would be too much of a coincidence."

Kamarov leads us down the backstreet for only a few minutes before turning down another. A few minutes more and we're face-to-face with the main street again. "Once we're across here, we'll be right back on track," Kamarov says.

"And how far from there?" Flash asks.

"Just a few blocks," Kamarov says. "Should be pretty quick."

"The coast is clear," I say after taking a long look down both directions of the street.

"Stay close," Kamarov says. Then he makes a run for it, keeping an eye on the rooftops ahead of us. We follow him across the street and make it to the other side unscathed. When we reach the next back-alley intersection, Kamarov pulls out his map and takes a quick look at it. "We're in the right spot," he says. "This way."

We're stopped the moment we turned by the sight of a group of hostiles right in front of us with ten or twelve men. None of them are facing our direction. Yet. They're gathered together like they're in some kind of discussion or taking a break. But one of them will surely spot us when they start to move out. We duck behind one of the walls without a second glance, even though no one has turned to look yet.

"How do we get past that?" Flash asks. "I came up with the last one; it's your turn for the ideas, Price."

"We have the element of surprise," I say. "But we risk going loud if we attack them."

"We may not have to," Kamarov says as he peeks around the corner.

Flash and I lean out to look. When we do, we see a small unit of men already engaging the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. None of the hostiles has a chance to fire a shot before the unit takes them out completely.

"It looks like someone called your element-of-surprise and raised you a we've-got-this-handled," Flash says. "Think they're friendlies?"

"The enemy of my enemy," I say.

"Those are resistance members," Kamarov says, stepping out of cover and toward the unit. When he's spotted by one of the men, the unit doesn't take hostile action, so Flash and I step up behind Kamarov. I notice that Flash is still prepped to attack, just in case. The resistance members don't look surprised to see us.

"Tovarishchi," one of them says—comrades. He appears to be the leader of this unit. "We got wind that you were here. We thought you could use some help."

Kamarov nods and says a few words of greeting in Russian. Then he says, "We are headed to the Hotel Lustig."

"Lustig?" the leader says. "Most of the ground routes from here are blocked."

"Do you know another way around?" I ask.

The leader smiles. "A _better_ way," he says, "one that will allow you to attack from the sky."

"The rooftops," Flash says. "What about snipers?"

"Eto ne problema," he says. "They won't know what hit them."

"All right," I say, then I speak through the coms. "Soap, what's your status?"

"In position," Soap says, "but there's a bloody army in front of us."

I nod to the leader and he takes point. "We're coming in from the west," I say. "Watch your fire."

The unit leader takes us up a fire escape while the rest of his men scatter and find their own ways up to the rooftops. Kamarov goes with another cluster of men. The rain picks up a bit on the way up. When we near the top, Flash says, "You know, being on top of a rickety building instead of inside of it does not make me feel better."

"There are worse things that could happen other than falling off a building," I say.

"So I've learned," she says.

When we reach the roofs, the leader keeps us low behind cover and makes a gesture for silence, even though the rain masks our talking pretty well. He doesn't take us far before he points. When we look, we see a sniper on the roof before us, and the fact that he was able to lead us right to one could only mean that the resistance has been tracking and studying enemy patrols while they've been in hiding.

I make a gesture to the others to stay back and wait for my signal and head for the sniper with my knife ready. With the rain muffling my footsteps, he doesn't hear me come up behind him—it's a seamless kill. The minute he does down, I can hear Soap on the coms.

"Nice timing, old man," he says. "Well, one's down, mate, but we've got five men, and they've got dozens."

"Don't worry," I say to him. "I've brought some friends." At that point, I give the signal. The unit leader must have spread words to the others because seconds later there's a small army on the rooftops laying fire down on the enemy, including Flash and the unit leader who have stepped up beside me. One of the groups even manages to take out a helo bringing in a BTR. When the bird goes down, the BTR goes with it and is destroyed by the drop. Two birds with one stone, as it were.

"Move with the rebels and get to the church," I tell Soap. "We'll cover you as best we can."

"Copy that," Soap says.

I turn to the unit leader and, without being asked, he nods his head and leads the way forward, showing us a safe route along the rooftops where we can lay down enemy fire to clear the way for Soap and Yuri. The amount of enemy resistance on the rooftops is negligible—for now—so we're free to cover Soap and Yuri almost completely as we make our way toward the hotel.

"I thought you said it was a few blocks," Flash says to Kamarov through the coms. "Learn how to read a map."

"Cut the bloody chatter," I say. "Focus on the enemy."

Having gone loud, it doesn't take long before the enemy is swarming the streets and even a few are attempting to make their ways onto the rooftops to take us out. The unit leader takes us mainly in the right direction, but we mostly let Yuri and Soap lead the way as we cover them on the streets below. Until they seem to disappear.

"Soap, I've lost sight of you," I say. "Soap, come in."

"Can't talk right now, Price," he says. "We're busy. We're going to cut through the buildings and find our way to the church. There's less resistance."

"Copy," I say. I stop and turn to the unit leader when he stops in front of me. "We need to get to the hotel."

"Understood," he says. "I can take you there. Kamarov and the others should be able to handle the rest from here."

"At least we'll be following someone who knows where they're going," Flash says—clearly a joke, but not a joke we have the luxury to laugh at right now.

"Soap, we're on our way to the hotel," I say into the coms. "Good luck."

Soap doesn't say anything in response. Doesn't really have to. If the mission goes bad now, luck won't be the thing that saves it.

With the enemy engaged mostly on the ground, it doesn't take long for Flash and I to get to the hotel—probably less than a half hour, and mostly tango-free. We don't go in just yet; we make ourselves comfortable nearby, ready ourselves for the mission but put ourselves in a safe position to wait—the meeting isn't for another couple of hours. Soap and Yuri check in when they get to the church and do the same. From there, it's like the clock is ticking down.

"This is it," I tell Flash.

She doesn't look fazed. "Damn straight," she says.

"We won't get a better chance than this," I say.

"With all due respect, Price, save your breath," she says. "I don't need a pep talk. I've got plenty of reason already to put an end to this guy."

"I'm not going to give you a pep talk," I say. "I'm going to tell you to keep a cool head."

"Save that kind of advice for an FNG," she says.

"You hate Makarov, maybe even more than me," I say, though I'm not sure if it's true myself. "Use that anger, but don't let it use you."

"Don't worry, _Obi-wan_," she says with a smirk—an empty one. Recently, she looks angry even smiling. "I'll defer to you. Whatever you say goes. As long as we get the bastard."

"We'll get him," I say. "If it's the last thing I do."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **I'm so sorry for the long wait, guys. I promise, I wasn't going to abandon this. I'm in my last semester of college and in the unfortunate position of finding it exceedingly difficult to motivate myself to do much of _anything_. I think the senioritis is hitting me pretty hard.

I've been working on this chapter gradually for months, so I hope there isn't anything disjointed in here. Let me know if there is and I'll do my best to fix it.

If everything goes as planned, there should be about five or six chapters left. Maybe seven? Certainly no more than ten. We're almost at the end~!

And just so you don't freak out that it's over or anything, I've been thinking about doing a series of one-shots set in the world of this story once _Disavowed_ is complete, so you should have plenty more to look forward to.

I think I'm getting a second wind, so I plan to have the next chapter up within the week.

Thanks for sticking with me, everyone~

HK


	18. A Question for the Philosophers

**[October 11th – 07:01:33]**

**[Elaine "Flash" Henderson]**

**[Prague, Czech Republic]**

Sitting on the roof across from the hotel, Price is still except for the cigar he's smoking. Still like the hawk turned statue to watch its prey from afar. It should be easy to spot a hawk in a gnarled tree, but it's not. Despite looking nothing like the branches surrounding it, it becomes part of the tree, as if it has and always will belong there.

That's how Price looks to me. It should be easy to spot a man on top of a building, but somehow Price looks like part of the building itself.

"You're fiddling," Price says to me—the first thing he's said in hours. We've been taking turns watching the hotel. We know when the meeting is supposed to start, but we can't take any chances.

"I'm not fiddling," I say back.

"You're grinding your teeth," he says. "Chewing your cheeks, stretching your trigger hand. You're fiddling."

"I'm not nervous," I say.

"I wasn't going to say nervous," Price says. "Though I _would_ say your nerves are getting the best of you. Overeager, uncomfortable even."

"You're not eager to finish this?"

"You need to learn to appreciate the silence," Price says. "We don't get many moments like this."

"We're close to the end," I say. "I'd say that calls for a different kind of emotion."

"We've thought that before," Price says. "A wolf circling its prey doesn't prematurely boast about its victory. It strikes just when it needs to in order to finish the kill. The feast comes after the hunt is over."

"Don't get all lofty on me," I say. "It's not at all the same thing."

"You said yourself. You're eager to finish this," Price says. "Right now you need to think about this mission, this moment, not what's going to happen if we win."

"_If_ we win?"

"Don't get me wrong," Price says. "I'm just as ready to send Makarov to hell as you are. But if we're not prepared for the worst, how can we be at our best?" He has a point but doesn't give me the chance to concede to it. He holds out his cigar and offers it to me.

"I've never smoked a cigar before," I say.

"Pull out a cigarette if that'll make you feel better," Price says. "Now's the time."

I take the cigar, albeit reluctantly, and say, "The one I threw out was the last one I had on me." The smoke tastes different, feels different in the lungs than a cigarette, and yet the taste isn't completely unfamiliar. It brings back memories of simpler days, days that seemed like hell at the time. Looking back, though, I realize those were the days when things actually went right.

Then I remember another detail—that I hadn't known Price during those simple days. When were the simple days for him? He'd been living in hell ever since the day I met him.

"This thing with Makarov," I say, "this has been going on for years for you."

"Sometimes it feels like a lifetime," Price says.

"Does it feel strange to be this close?"

"I don't think I know what strange is anymore," Price says. "Everything we do seems inevitable now."

"You can't tell me you never think about after," I say. I take one more suck from the cigar and give it back to Price.

"There won't be an after for me," Price says. "This is what I do. It's in my blood now. Too late to take it out."

"Even if things are peaceful after this?"

"When are things ever peaceful?" Price says. A grim thought—and yet another good point. "There will always be a need for people like us," he says. "Not a happy truth, but we're not in it for the happy truths."

"Which truths are we in it for, then?"

"I'm just a soldier," Price says. "That's a question for the philosophers."

The last of Price's cigar falls to the ground in clumps of ash and a car pulls up in front of the hotel. "Right on schedule," Price says. "Let's make this happen."

He checks in with MacTavish and Yuri, who are in the building on the other side of the hotel. From their vantage point, they should have the perfect view of the meeting—a perfect line of sight to take out Makarov clean and quick if Price and I don't follow through. If all else fails, Price and I will cut off escape routes as best we can. It's finally the end of the line.

Makarov isn't in the first car, but Price and I start preparing anyway. We check our weapons and the rappel lines to make sure everything is secure. MacTavish gives the word when he spots Makarov's vehicle, and Price and I rappel down the building to a window ledge on the back side. Price touches down first and checks for hostiles. I follow down behind him when he gives the okay.

"Makarov is headed inside the building," MacTavish says. "You need to hurry."

"Breaching," Price says.

We aren't met with too much resistance upon entering the hall connected to the window ledge—only two guards, and we're able to take them both out before they can raise an alarm. The penthouse where the meeting is taking place is a floor up and has its own elevator. Price and I continue through the hallway, and the thought crosses my mind that we wouldn't normally pick a route that's so exposed. The only hostiles in the area are at the end of the hall, however, and don't notice us before we duck into the stairwell and start for the penthouse level.

Price keeps Yuri and MacTavish posted through the coms. They start taking out hostiles when we reach the penthouse level, leaving us with only a few to deal with ourselves. We fight them as quickly and quietly as possible. One almost gets me from behind, but he's taken out by either Yuri or MacTavish before his attack follows through. From outside on the roof to clearing out the penthouse, the whole ordeal takes less than fifteen minutes. Price and I position ourselves in front of the elevator and wait for the inevitable.

"So, what _will_ you do after, Price," I ask. "You really think you'll keep on with the one-four-one?"

"For as long as I can," Price says. "And I'm betting you will too."

He could be wrong, and he could be right. It takes me a few seconds to realize that I'm not actually sure which. But the elevator gets closer to the top floor and doesn't leave me much more time to think about it. When the elevator reaches our floor, the toll sounds and everything is quiet. Then the doors open.

MacTavish speaks before I can wrap my mind around what's going on. "What the hell?" he says. "Price, who is that?"

Kamarov. At nearly the same time Price voices the name into the coms, it finally comes to my mind. Sitting in the elevator before us is not Makarov, not his lackey's, not even any one of the grunt members of the ultranationalists, but Kamarov tied to a chair with C4 strapped to him. We haven't seen him since we split up. Was he captured? Or were the men that helped us working for Makarov all along?

"I'm sorry, Price," Kamarov says. His face is covered with his balaclava, but there's something in his voice—tears, maybe, or anger or regret. Maybe all three.

Kamarov opens his mouth to speak again, but the radio strapped to his vest clicks on and a voice comes through. "Captain Price," the voice says, and it can only be Makarov. "Ad zhdet tebya," he says—hell awaits you.

The detonator beeps. I hear MacTavish shout to us through the coms, but his words sound far away. Price's grip on my arm is the only thing that's real in the seconds before the C4 explodes. My legs start to move on their own, but even they feel distant somehow, like some other part of me. Price leads the way into one of the side rooms and jumps through a parlor window without even stopping to think about it. I jump right after him. The explosion happens a second later and I can almost feel the heat on my back as we drop down to a balcony below.

We land with a thud that dulls the ringing in my ears. Everything is always quieter after an explosion, like the whole world has paused to absorb the event. Then the sounds spill back in one by one. I turn to look at the damage to find the entire penthouse floor blown out. There's also a cloud of smoke erupting from across the street where Yuri and MacTavish are. The thud wasn't from our landing after all—it was another explosion seconds after the one we escaped from.

"We have to move! Now," Price says.

To hell with the danger. We take the short way down, over the crumbling balcony wall, onto a pile of rubble, and down the side of a collapsed wall. From there, we sprint across the street to the base of the church. Bits and pieces of scaffolding fall around us while large planks and portions of the metal skeleton dangle above us. We find Yuri and MacTavish in the settling cloud of dust.

Price heads straight for MacTavish and brushes debris off of him while I help Yuri to his feet. "You okay? You alright?" I ask.

Yuri nods after glancing toward his feet. "Da, da," he says. "Just shaken."

"Yuri," Price says, "grab him. We need to move now!"

I don't notice that we're under fire until that moment, but the fact that MacTavish isn't getting to his feet is what bothers me. Yuri steps away from me and drags MacTavish off the floor. That's when I see the blood all over the front of his shirt, but I can't tell what from. Maybe the debris, maybe his old wound has reopened—it's impossible to tell. But it's a lot of blood, and I can't seem to move my feet. It reminds me of the gulag for some reason—of one of my own past injuries, not MacTavish's—and there's a dull ache in my gut.

"Flash," Price says, "suppressing fire, now!"

I leap around Yuri and MacTavish and return fire to the hostiles just down the street from us. "Price, we've got a BTR incoming at our two," I say.

"And an enemy bird," he says. "Get off the road!"

Price blows a hole through a wall to our left with his grenade launcher. "Flash, take the rear," he says as he takes point through the building. Yuri follows behind him with MacTavish stumbling next to him. I follow after that, taking out two hostiles as I pass through the opening.

A few more keep coming, so I don't take much time to think about it. "I'm bringing the wall down, stand clear," I say. I use my own grenade launcher to bring the second story wall down and block our flank. Price pushes into the next room in time for the wall and a portion of the ceiling to come down without crushing us too.

The action gives us a temporary reprieve, enough for Yuri to set MacTavish down so Price can get a good look at his wounds. "He's losing a lot of blood," Price says. He hands his M4A1 to Yuri and leans over MacTavish.

"Just patch me up," MacTavish says. "Get me back in this."

"Price," I say, "that debris isn't going to hold them off for long." The adrenaline keeps the quiver from rising in my voice, but the fear is there along with the pain in my gut. The longer I focus on it, the more it feels like rocks in my stomach.

Price nods and says, "It's not safe here. We have to move."

"I'll take point," Yuri says. He's covered in blood now too—blood from MacTavish's wound. When Price picks MacTavish off the ground, the blood seeps into his shirt as well. It drips on the floor. It gets everywhere, and my stomach starts to feel worse. And I can't figure out why, but I keep thinking back to the gulag, to the ringing in my ears, Ghost calling out my name. I think of being dragged over the edge of the helicopter and knowing then—it was that exact moment—I knew I was going to die.

"Flash, keep moving," Price says ahead of me. We're under fire again. Yuri leads us across a small street to a store where Price kicks the door down and heads in. "That chopper is circling back around," he says. "We have to move."

Hostiles come from our twelve and six in that moment. Yuri and I split up to take them down. There are fewer enemies in the back than the front. Once I finish dealing with them, I step just outside the door and plant explosives on the outside walls. "As soon as we push forward, I'm gonna blow the walls again—buy us a little more time," I say.

"Store clear," Yuri says. One more hostile comes through the far door. MacTavish is the one to take him down.

"Nice shot, son," Price says.

"I can still teach you a thing or two, old man," MacTavish says. The tone in his voice lightens my heart a little, but not enough to ease the pain in my gut.

We head out into the courtyard and I pull the trigger on the explosives. Whatever enemies were trying to flank us are hopefully taken care of, slowed down at the very least.

It all feels very familiar somehow, us running through the streets of Prague, totally outnumbered by the enemy. I can't figure why. Maybe it's that we've been on the run for what feels like forever, or maybe it's that MacTavish's injury brings a very recognizable and bitter taste to the mouth, and I don't mean my injury in the gulag. Rio maybe or some other mission where we've been heavily outnumbered—but when aren't we? Or maybe it makes me think of Private West. It's one of those moments that make you seriously question the life you've led, the choices you've made. How did it all lead to this?

And suddenly _after_ feels very far away again. Price was right, I realize. I probably never would have left the one-four-one. But just the possibility, just knowing that I might have the option—all taken away in one moment, and the potential of losing even more than that is growing by the second.

"They'll just keep coming," MacTavish says.

"Don't stop," Price says. "Keep moving!"

"Just leave me, Price," MacTavish says—the words all of us hope we'll never have to say or hear.

"No," Price says. "I'm getting you out of this."

The enemy breaks through to our flank again, and this time Yuri has to help me take out the overwhelming force. But more just keep coming from what feels like all directions, and the chances of _any_ of us getting out alive are getting slimmer.

That's when the enemies at our flank start dropping like flies.

"It's the Resistance!" Price says.

"We'll hold them off," one of the men yells. "Get out of here!"

"Yuri, Flash," Price says, "we need to move Soap. Get over here and cover us!"

Yuri and I fall back and let the Resistance soldiers take our place. We turn back to our twelve and start fighting off the swarming enemy infantry. Price drags MacTavish toward a door that's being covered by a Resistance member. Yuri and I follow him and the Resistance guy shuts the door behind us. Inside are even more Resistance members who leap to aid us. They help Price get MacTavish to a table where they start to work on him without missing a beat.

Yuri and I both throw down our guns and rush to help as well. Price orders Yuri to put pressure on the wound while he waves for the Resistance soldiers to get a medic. The wound has bled the color right out of MacTavish's skin. The expression "white as a sheet" has never sounded more appropriate as well as unwanted.

"We need a medic now," Price says. "Hurry the bloody hell up! C'mon, stay with me, son!"

"Price," MacTavish says.

"Not now, Soap," Price says. "Just rest. Where is that medic!?"

"Stay with us, John," I say. "Please. You can pull through this."

MacTavish places a hand on mine but looks to Price. "Price," he says—his voice is so quiet that we have to lean in to hear him. "You need to know." MacTavish takes his over hand from his side and grabs Price's vest to pull him closer.

"Makarov knows Yuri."

His hand goes limp.

There's a small moment of dull silence.

And then I can't hear anything but the sound of Price's "no" and my own uneven breathing.

I push Yuri out of my way and grab MacTavish by the vest. "John," I yell. "John, wake up!"

From the opposite side, Price says, "Soap! Soap!" He grabs MacTavish's vest with a free hand too so that we're both trying to shake him awake, shout him back from the other side.

And then a Resistance member is pulling us both away, telling us that we have to go. Yuri's voice joins theirs as they try to usher us along, but Price fights back.

"Get off me," he yells, and the Resistance member ushering me along steps back too.

Price pulls his pistol from his belt and lays it across MacTavish's chest. The pistol—MacTavish told me about it once—the one that Price gave to MacTavish to take out Zakhaev. Price takes one thing from MacTavish: a journal. I reach over and grab his dog tag from around his neck.

The world always seems quiet after an explosion.

The sounds spills back in and Price puts a gentle hand on my arm to steer me toward the door. My nose starts to clog in the fashion of tearless crying, so I open my mouth. What at first sounds like a short sob turns into adrenalized breathing, and I wipe my nose on my sleeve. There would be time later—didn't MacTavish say that to me once?

Price keeps his eyes on mine as he calls Yuri over to open the door. In that moment, I feel like I know exactly what he's thinking, like we can read each other's minds. No, closer than that. It's like we're the same person, and we both know what's going to happen next.

The moment Yuri has the door open, Price punches him and Yuri rolls down the stairs and slam his head against the wall. I feel an intense satisfaction in that moment, but it's not enough, so when Price and I both pull out a pistol and point them to Yuri's head, I seriously consider pulling the trigger. I think Price does.

"Soap trusted you," Price says. "I thought I could to. So why in bloody hell does Makarov know you?"

And Yuri spills it all. He tells us everything, from the very beginning, from the point where everything changed. Forever. Zakhaev, Al-Asad, the whole war in the Middle East—Makarov was responsible for all of it. In a way, even the insanity brought about by Shepherd. And Yuri played a role in all of it.

Even Private Alan.

"It was you," I say. "You're the one who leaked the information so we could get Alan into Makarov's trust. But why?"

"Because it wasn't war," Yuri said. "It was madness. I was a soldier of Russia, not a taker of innocent lives. But in his eyes, this marked me as the enemy. I escaped death that day, but I never forgot. I was compelled to stop Makarov's plan for the sake of my country, but revenge was my choice. I joined the loyalists so I could accomplish both."

"Okay, Yuri," Price says. "You've bought yourself some time. For now." He puts is pistol away.

I keep mine right where it is.

Yuri keeps his eyes on me but tries to persuade Price to talk me out of it. "Call your dog off," he says.

Price folds his arms and steps away. "Not my place," he says. "You're on your own."

"I've told you everything," Yuri says. "What more do you want?"

"I want to know that no one else is going to die just because I let you live," I say.

"Soap's death is not my fault."

"No," I say, "maybe not directly. But how many times were you alone with Makarov, how many chances did you have to put a bullet between his eyes before this went too far? You could have stopped this before it started."

"How was I to know what would happen?"

"You could have known twenty years ago when Zakhaev's actions threatened to start a nuclear war," I say.

"So Zakhaev had to be stopped," Yuri says. "I agree with that. But there's no way I could have known that Makarov would use his death as a foothold."

"Fine, maybe not," I say. "Maybe all it takes is bad fucking judge of character."

"As soon as I realized what would happen, I did what I could to help," Yuri says. "The plan failed. That isn't anyone's fault. There's still a chance to stop him, and killing me isn't going to make that happen."

I take a hand off of my pistol to wipe my face again, and that breaks my resolve. I give the pistol to Price without really thinking about it. He takes it in understanding and helps Yuri to his feet. "One slip up, Price, and I swear to god," I say.

"One slip up," he says, "and I'll gladly do it myself."

I take the lead down the tunnel and wipe my hand on my shirt.

Blood. There's blood everywhere—on my hands, on my clothes. MacTavish's blood. I pull my shirt up to wipe the tears welling in my eyes, and there's blood there too. Time later, I keep reminding myself. There will be more time later.

But later seems like a far-off impossible thing. Later, tomorrow, after. There is no after anymore. There's only now. And now I have nothing left, nothing except for Makarov, and _that_ is the truth. The only one that matters anymore.

Only one way this ends now. The after belongs to someone else.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Long time no see. This was a hard chapter to write, for obvious reasons. I don't think I've ever liked Price as much as I do in this chapter. I never intended for Price and Flash to become as close as they are, but they really are like two peas in a pod. Also, I'm really hoping Yuri and Flash can come to terms with this situation—despite the malice on surface, they really kind of did get along. I think they were on the verge of becoming good friends, and then it all shattered.

See you all with the next chapter! It should be pretty exciting for what I've got planned.


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